Do you manage orders, deliveries and vehicles for multiple depots?
If you use tools like spreadsheets, calendars and paper planners to manage all of those moving parts centrally, your process will be highly involved, very complicated – and prone to mistakes.
Or maybe you manage each depot individually? Treating each hub as a separate entity can lead to inefficiency and can be prone to miscommunication.
A multi-depot delivery scheduling system centralises planning and management for all depots or hubs. This gives planners an overview of all delivery and collection ‘runs’ and routes for a more holistic planning and scheduling process.
When we talk about Stream Go as a delivery scheduling system, we’re actually talking about:
- Intelligent logistics planning & route optimisation – Automatically planning the most efficient routes, taking locations, total route times vehicle capacities and driver availability into account
- Electronic proof of delivery & collection – collecting proof of delivery (including photos, notes and sign-on-glass) with the driver app, and syncing that data to a secure, cloud-based system
- In-flight driver tracking & customer communication- The driver app also collects location data and is able to offer accurate ETAs, via email & SMS notifications or through the self-service customer gateway
- Powerful order & performance monitoring – Get an at-a-glance overview of current runs, deliveries & collections in real-time in the wall-mounted progress monitor, and quickly search & find any order using any combination of criteria
What are the benefits of using a delivery scheduling system?
Using a delivery scheduling system like Stream Go allows you to improve the efficiency of your logistics operations. It gives you better control and visibility over your vehicles, drivers and orders, so you can improve communication with customers whilst reducing time spent manually planning runs and cutting time-on-the road too.
And, how about multi-depot?
A depot, in terms of Stream Go’s delivery software, might also be known as a hub, warehouse or fulfilment centre. It is essentially a location in your business from which multiple assets are managed:
- Stock & inventory
- Picking & packing orders
- Storing and maintaining vehicles
- A ‘base’ for drivers
- Back-office activities.
Why put a multi-depot delivery scheduling system in place?
We already understand that a delivery scheduling system like Stream Go has benefits for any organisation managing deliveries and collections. It allows you to reduce the time & resource spent on logistics planning without compromising customer service levels. It also makes your runs more efficient (cutting down time-on-the-road, mileage, fuel, etc.) whilst improving accuracy (by reducing the risk of mistakes and miscommunication).
But using a delivery system that has multi-depot functionality in-built means that:
- Vehicles and drivers can be shared across depots – To maximise the efficiency of each run – particularly for delivery and collection locations that are ‘on the border’ between depots
- Stock and inventory can be easily trunked between depots – Allowing the seamless flow of goods between depots, so there is no need for every depot to hold stock if every item
- Fewer planners are required – Routes can be managed centrally by a dedicated planner, so individual depot managers can focus their time elsewhere
- Visibility over vehicles and drivers from neighbouring depots – Even if you opt to continue planning for each depot individually, depot managers are able to collaborate and work together, so the organisation is working as a unified business – instead of each depot acting as a separate entity
- Faster, more efficient deliveries – multi-depot vehicle scheduling makes the most efficient use of resources to make deliveries and collections quickly and smoothly
Schedule your demo today, to learn more about managing multiple depots with Stream Go
