Do you know why the concept of last mile delivery has become a staple to the logistics industry? It’s speedy delivery. The customers just hate delayed deliveries no matter what are the reasons for the unnecessary delays and prefer to choose the competitors. It’s a recipe of disaster for the businesses.

The inefficiency in the last mile delivery can be removed with a proper vehicle route planning in place. If you are thinking route planning with pen and paper and a couple of calls or texts can let your drivers deliver the product at the right time and everything will work out as expected, then you are absolutely wrong.

Conventionally, the route planning eats up a lot of time, and no visibility under the shipment progress may lead to imprecise routes that in turn, increases driver attrition, emerges legal hassles, and surge fuel expenses. It can be fixed when advanced route optimization software is integrated with last mile delivery software.

Ending the guessing game, the route planning software design the accurate optimized routes for every delivery; showcase the visual comparison of planned route against actual route on a map; enable dynamic re-routing with great insights into traffic and weather conditions, roads knowledge, time-preferences, and area-specific information; allow businesses to manage the multiple route plans on a single dashboard; contributes a ton in keeping the operations run seamlessly and enhancing the customer experience.

What are you thinking? Interested in investing in the routing software? If so, I assert to check out the advantages that the process of moving from pen and paper to cloud will bring.

Here is the myriad of the benefits that route planning software brought on the table:

• Plan in a matter of seconds

The software helps in getting rid of the messy paperwork that even consumes several hours in day-to-day deliveries and now, it takes less than half of a minute to plan routes. It provides a precise optimized route by performing all the complex calculations (Route optimization, dynamic re-routing, and updation of ETAs) in a few seconds that allow the drivers to cover more routes in the same time. The route planning not only become easy while delivery planning will be decreased by 95%.

• Increase savings

The optimized routes provide the shortest path to the drivers to deliver the order, which means they can complete more deliveries in reduced time with less fuel consumption. The increased productivity augments the ROI by 30%.

Also, getting good routes with zero hassle, diminished turns, and fewer traffic results in less time get wasted by the drivers in combating with the challenges and slash the unapproved overtime costs. No additional fuel expenses get summed up to the profit side.

When the drivers are getting everything beforehand from optimized route info to safety info, they are held accountable for the delays and that also keep them on their toes.

• Ensure safety

The mishaps (Adverse weather conditions or accidents) are unfortunate and unforeseen and lead to spending big bundles on the repairing, medical, and legal issues. The risks cannot be avoided but their worse impact can be minimized by scheduling a new route for the drivers that’s safe to travel and enable timely shipping. This all is done automatically when the geographical location and date is entered. Besides, the customers are timely informed for the delays with GPS tracking that increases visibility into delivery along with ETAs.

The driver’s driving behavior can be tracked with GPS services and they can be sent real-time alerts for harsh braking, rapid acceleration, or speeding issues for ensuring their safety.

• Simulation for scale

When the business is prospering, its expansion or addition of new store is most probable. The software provides a better understanding and rich insights into how many drivers or resources need to be increased to fulfill the customer’s orders on-time and stay profitable. It builds efficient plans for the staff in a few minutes.

• Uplift the throughput

Don’t panic, when the business gets more orders to deliver on-time. The software is capable enough to strike a fine balance between the number of deliveries and drivers at the push of a button. It creates the robust routes that enable drivers to complete maximum deliveries at the same time like- delivering all the orders coming in the way and thereby more can be done with the same resources allocation. Moreover, the performance can be analyzed on the analytics dashboard to determine, if the route plan requires modification.

• Stay competitive

The on-time delivery is the hallmark of the leading last mile delivery companies such as FedEx. When the businesses fulfill the last mile delivery needs by hook or crook, they gain an upper hand over the competitors. The route planning software comes to rescue.

The businesses don’t need to keep the fingers crossed and hope order is delivered on time leveraging GPS tracking in conjunction with route software. There will be no blind spot from the moment the driver pick-up the order to the drop-off location as the GPS location is continuously updated. The complete visibility into driver’s activity ensures that the product will be delivered as planned.

In the events of unplanned delays, the businesses can see the driver closest to broken-down delivery vehicle and re-route the closest driver to make the delivery at the defined time. It’s noticed by the customers, which makes them feel valued and give more credence to the business the next time when they order a product. It lets businesses seize an edge in the fierce competition.

• Delight the customers

The customers are the real hero of this industry. When they get outstanding services, instant information, and timely deliveries, undoubtedly, they become a great fan of the business services and look no further. The route optimization provides real-time visibility into the shipment, enable last-minute delivery, and send a prior notification in the event the delivery is not possible in the defined time window. In this manner, the software delivers beyond the customer’s expectations, which keeps them happy.

Wrap up

The last mile delivery concept accounts to 28% of the transportation cost and that can be reduced by minimizing delivery planning time, shortening routes that save fuel and wages, tracking the drivers in the real-time, and updating the customers in an automated fashion. All is feasible by embracing route planning software.

Don’t hang fire! Implement the software right away to control the last mile delivery efficiently, make the drivers happy, and win the customers forever.

This article is contributed by Noman Shaikh — Digital Marketing Head at Fixlastmile which is known for developing top-notch last mile delivery Software.

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