OVERVIEW

Following Uber's acquisition of Postmates, we faced major challenges integrating two systems and migrating merchants from the Postmates platform to Uber Eats without disrupting their operations or compromising their satisfaction. This case study focuses on the cross functional collaboration and system integration required to successfully migrate thousands of accounts.

CONTEXT

Problem Statement

Uber needed to migrate thousands of Postmates merchant accounts to Uber Eats without disrupting operations, losing merchant trust, or compromising order reliability while building internal scalable systems to support future partner migrations.

My Role

I was responsible for partnering cross functionally with teams to transition account data and ensure merchant readiness, reduce time to activation, and enable 100% of accounts to successfully use the Eats platform.

Project Goals

Primary

• Migrate 100% of Postmate's accounts to Uber Eats with no disruption to merchant operations or order reliability

Secondary

• Correct account data gaps and ensure compatibility with Uber's systems

• Reduce time to activation per account through scalable tooling

• Standardize pricing, billing, and zoning for all migrated merchants

RESEARCH 

Architecture Audit

Audited Postmates merchant structure and current onboarding workflow and pain points to assess compatibility with Uber's systems.

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System Gap Analysis

Identified API gaps, outdated hierarchies, service area mismatches, unscalable workflows, fragmented tools, and inconsistent data practices across the two platforms.

Client Awareness and Involvement

Defined each partner's current level of involvement with managing their account data and activation process, as well as their comfort with onboarding tools and dashboards.

Billing Practices and Contracts

Reviewed standard pricing structures and incentives available to Postmates merchants via their contracts and identified non supported promotions and pricing structures.

Monitoring and Testing

Identified testing procedures and test account creation to validate migrated data, prepare for the first cohort, and ensure no service disruptions at launch.

Metrics for Success

• % increase in OTR

• % accounts onboarded to Eats

• % decrease in support tickets

CHALLENGES

Merchant Communication and Trust

• When courier issues or API integrations arose, merchants were unaware of the backend work required for a fix

• Communications shared with merchants about new processes led to confusion and decreased merchant trust

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Billing and Pricing

• Uber's pricing implementation tooling did not support the same tiered and variable pricing structures that Postmates did

• Merchants were contractually signed to specific pricing, giving Uber low flexibility on changes without proper documentation updates

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Systems and Data

• No centralized system to track migration progress or enforce best practices

• Postmates zoning and serviceability areas included plots that Eats tagged as non serviceable

• Zone names and defined areas did not match or had overlap between platforms

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Org and Process

• Building new processes and integrating with the Postmates Legacy Team created unclear delegation of responsibilities

• Loss of information during communication handoffs between teams slowed execution

APPROACH

Phase 1: Data Migration and Systems Alignment

Audited and corrected account data across both platforms, resolved API and zoning gaps with Engineering, and created test cohorts to validate data integrity before full migration. Built centralized tracking to monitor migration progress and enforce data standards.

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Phase 2: Onboarding Optimization and Merchant Experience

Streamlined the activation workflow to reduce time to launch per account. Coordinated with AMs to communicate clearly with merchants, address billing and pricing concerns, and support contract updates for non-compliant pricing. Created merchant facing resources to reduce confusion and inbound support volume.

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Bulk Tooling with Engineering

Co designed and launched bulk migration tooling with Engineering that enabled faster data transfers with built in validation checks, reducing manual error and supporting scalable changes to legacy Postmates accounts.