Online retailers now face many challenges in managing the delivery and transportation of their goods, which can ultimately impact on costs and customer satisfaction. Temando’s State of Shipping in Commerce 2016 report highlighted these particular concerns for retailers: 66% retailers have seen a 5-10% increase in the cost of delivery over time and 27% are highly concerned about meeting customer expectations.
Dedicated delivery and transport management software is essential to reducing the costs of delivery, whilst improving the level of customer service provided by a business. As Hank Cantiz points out in Logistics Business IT, “it is shocking to think of a shipper of any size refusing to employ a contemporary system to manage the transportation process”.
Software like STREAM can provide solutions for retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers and distributors which will improve their operations, by reducing costs and improving service in the following ways:
Cutting fuel and emissions
By optimising routes for deliveries, organisations often report significant fuel and emissions reductions, while vehicles can be utilised more efficiently and effectively. Typically, this reduces the cost to the company – as well as the planet.
STREAM’s route optimisation algorithm calculates the most efficient set of delivery routes (and collections if required) and assign those routes to the available vehicles and / or most applicable vehicle type.
Optimised routes take into account delivery times, weight, cube and distance. The process is iterative, allowing additions and fine-tuning right up until the time the vehicle leaves (and later in terms of collections).
Driver APP and ePOD
Mobile driver apps can help to streamline the delivery process for your delivery drivers – and significantly reduce one of the biggest challenges faced by many organisations: mountains of paperwork in the form of delivery notes, schedules, vehicle safety checks and proof of delivery. Losing vital pieces of paperwork can be all too easy meaning customers might not get the products they have ordered, get them at the right time or you might not get proof they’ve been delivered which makes invoicing and payment difficult.
Once delivery routes are optimised, these are made available to your drivers mobile app. Once they log in they can view their delivery runs and any specific instructions for each delivery. During the delivery route, drivers are able to easily record specific events (for instance a failed delivery), capture signatures and photographs and make notes about each delivery.
GPS tracking also means that any disruptions or delays in the delivery process can be relayed to you (and partners and customers if required).
All this is captured in real-time and relayed back to you.
STREAM’s mobile app for drivers is available for both consumer Android mobile devices and Zebra ruggedised Android devices.
Reduce admin time
By automating route optimisation and delivery confirmation, time previously spent manually planning deliveries – and confirming delivery slots with customers – can be used more productively, and orders can be processed and delivered quickly.
With drivers logging delivery information directly into the app and customers able to view the delivery process in real-time, less time is spent reviewing, checking and inputting delivery details.
Daily vehicle walk-around compliance checks can also be integrated into the app, saving the time involved in tracking and filing paper records, and helping to ensure vehicle safety.
Improve customer service
Deliveries can be completed faster, as orders can be added to a route up to the last minute. With the self-service customer gateway, customers are able to choose more specific time-slots, and are able to track their goods from the warehouse to their front door, and interact with drivers, making them feel more in control of their online shopping experience. Route optimisation and electronic proof-of-delivery mean that error is greatly reduced, and customers will be more impressed than ever with the level of service provided.
Plan efficient routes
When delivery routes are planned efficiently and effectively, drivers and vehicles can be much more productive.
As we discussed earlier, STREAM’s route optimisation algorithm calculates the most efficient set of delivery routes and collections, assigning those routes to the vehicles that you have available on any particular day and to the most applicable vehicle type.
As the whole route optimisation process is iterative, you can make changes right up until the time the vehicle leaves, meaning you might be able to add an extra order to the vehicle.
Reduce Delivery costs
With transport and delivery management software, routes are optimised which means that resources can be managed much more effectively, cutting costs in terms of both planning and transportation, with the potential for more deliveries to be made per route.
Proactive email and text communications with customers, specific delivery windows and in-flight driver tracking can all help to reduce failed deliveries. While the ability to monitor and interrogate your delivery data mean you can identify where bottlenecks may occur: do particular customers keep your delivery drivers waiting? Are turnaround times at certain depots always longer than anticipated? Being armed with the information provides your planners to make adjustments that may add up to significant savings in the mid to long-term.
No IT admin
Notably, users of STREAM have not had to hire any additional IT personnel to manage the application. Nor have they had to purchase any additional computing equipment. After all, STREAM is all in the cloud.
Built on the IBM Power Systems platform, STREAM enables small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to access the same or similar software applications larger companies have access — without having to host and maintain their own IT resources.
Improve Cashflow
Information about orders stock can be tracked throughout the order-to-delivery process.
Once a successful delivery is recorded in STREAM, your employees are notified and can immediately generate an invoice. For many users of STREAM, in the past, this may have involved waiting for their delivery driver to either return to the depot with a signed document or fax one over, only after which the invoice was generated. Given sometimes long payment terms, this often resulted in slow cash flow.
Now, however, the minute there’s a delivery, users can invoice their customers (whether that be a manufacturer, retailer, wholesaler, distributer or end consumer), thanks to seamless integrations with back-office order management and accounting systems
With research, from OC&C, indicating that online deliveries will account for 40% of non-food sales by 2025, managing the logistics of delivery and transportation is becoming more complex. Delivery and transportation management software can provide a practical, streamlined solution to the problems facing any organisation with complex delivery or service management requirements.
