Kurly Pushes to Internalize Address Refinement Service to Escape External Dependency

Kurly's OMS team took over the TAM (Transportation Area Management) service in January 2023 and recognized the limitations of the address refinement service that relied on an external vendor. Costs were incurred per call, amounting to 3 to 7 million KRW per month, once reaching as much as 30 million KRW, and external system errors or delays directly affected delivery failures and product exposure.

The Risks of External Dependency

As in the case where delivery was impossible due to delayed address refinement for a newly built apartment, being unable to directly control address refinement—a core internal function—became an obstacle to service expansion. In particular, CS inquiries concentrated in the afternoon hours (e.g., "the neighboring house is possible but mine is not"), latitude/longitude errors, and Saebyeol Delivery failures clearly revealed the risks of external dependency.

Address System and Purpose of Refinement

South Korea has legally mandated road name addresses since 2014, and the proportion of road name address entries among Kurly orders is overwhelmingly high. Address refinement goes beyond simply obtaining latitude/longitude—it is the process of mapping a customer's entered lot-number address or incomplete road name address to the accurate building management number managed by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety. This is a key procedure for preventing misdelivery caused by errors in selecting a building within an apartment complex or failure to specify a particular building in a mixed-use complex.

Goals of the Internalization Project

The OMS team began research in May 2023 and is proceeding with the project, targeting full internalization by September 30, 2024. The slogan is "Let's refine even the most garbled address request into a perfectly clean one," with the goal of accurately converting various forms of customer-entered addresses and securing stability without relying on external API calls.