When it comes to business-to-business (B2B) deliveries, delivering the right goods to the right place is only half of the equation.
The other half is making sure those goods are delivered at a time when there will be someone at the premises to accept the delivery.
And, for that reason, you now have the ability to set opening times against any location in Stream.
How do location opening times work?
You can now add opening times to any location address for an order.
Opening times are then used when using the automated route planning functionality (autoplan) in Stream to ensure the delivery meets the opening times of the location.
Use Cases:
Here are a few examples of use cases/situations in which you might find location opening times a valuable feature for aiding delivery planning:
- Restaurants/takeaways, where their delivery windows often fall outside of the hours that the venue is open for service, and/or they operate on split shifts, e.g. fish & chip restaurants that have frying times over lunch and dinner
- Businesses that only accept delivery of goods on specific days and/or at specific times
- A business that is in an area/street with time restrictions on when deliveries can be made
- Businesses with whom you have arranged designated days/times to make their deliveries
- Businesses where there is nobody on the premises before or after the published opening/closing times
Benefits of using opening times for deliveries:
If you feel that one of these use cases explains your logistics operation, then here are some of the benefits you can expect when planning with opening times:
- Fewer failed deliveries, as drivers will only be scheduled for delivery jobs when there’s someone available to receive the goods
- More accurate route planning as you can plan specific deliveries based on their opening times and plan any additional delivery and/or collection jobs for other customers around them
- More reliable ETAs thanks to being able to account for opening times during the route planning stage and not dealing with the consequences after the fact
- Reduced delivery mileage/retracing of routes as drivers won’t turn up to find a business closed or nobody available to receive goods at that time and have to come back at a later time or date
- Better vehicle utilisation as drivers don’t need to spend hours waiting around for locations to open and can complete more deliveries in a single shift
- Reduced reliance on complex opening times schedules being stored in individuals’ brains
- Win more business as you can offer deliveries during set opening times
How do I set up Location Opening Times
Want to get started adding opening times to your delivery locations?
Check out our knowledge base article on Location opening times for help getting started.
Not yet a Stream customer?
Explore more of our delivery route planning benefits, or book a demo with our team today.
