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Professional delivery route planning — 7 exclusive benefits for your delivery service
Sebastian Terlunen
Route planning and delivery route planning. Two synonyms? In everyday life and even in a professional environment, the two terms are often considered equally important. But there are fundamental differences. What are the differences and what are the benefits of professionally planning your tours in everyday life with your delivery service — e.g. beverage delivery service, Bread delivery service, food delivery service — has, explains the following blog.
Imagine that you get into your car and want to get to the next customer. But you don't know exactly where and how to get there. You will probably then pick up your cell phone and get on Google Maps Let it navigate. Would that now fall under the term route or tour planning? The solution: classic route planning. But what if you don't just want to go to one customer? What if you want to deliver your regional products to multiple customers. For example, you want to go to the restaurateur, then to LEH, then to kindergarten and finally to school. All of a sudden, it's not that easy anymore, right? It is clear that you want to reach out to all customers as cost and time efficiently as possible. Google Maps can give you the shortest route to one Customers charge. But don't put customers in an optimal order. And this shows the main difference between the two planning options.
In this planning variant, “orders” (i.e. customer orders in the case of regional direct marketing) are combined into tours and the best possible order is determined in which they should be approached.
Now, of course, it is questionable whether the typical private individual has a professional software needed to plan the tours. But it gets very interesting when you run a delivery service, for example. Here you usually have to process many different customers or stops one after the other.
With a Route planning Can be used not only for one Vehicle one individual Create a tour, but for yours entire vehicle fleet all tours. This not only takes into account the distances to be traveled. Instead, the planning variant also takes into account whether the fleet consists only of cars or also of cargo bikes. Among other things, various transport capacities, maximum travel times and road clearances can be taken into account.
As a result, you can use this planning variant to make your delivery trips as efficient as possible. Or rather: let them design. Because with the right software — as with Freight pilot — will your tours automatically Optimally put together.
7 reasons for professional planning softwareThe differences between the two planning variants were shown above. Wherever a delivery service is part of the business model — e.g. regional direct marketing, Beverage delivery service, Bread delivery service — Is a professional worthwhile Route planning software Definitely. But what exactly are the benefits?
A small Numerical example: Imagine you have 10 assignments, all of which you have to do one after the other by car. With 10 orders, there are already around 3.6 million (!!!) Options for how you can start the orders. It would be extremely time-consuming and costly to manually select a good tour. Professional software will find the best for you from the 3.6 million options.
Another advantage — you may have already figured it out: The optimized order of stops saves you a lot of travel kilometers and therefore costs. Because if the tour is planned efficiently, you have to travel fewer kilometers and thus save a lot of fuel costs. According to a study by Seco You can achieve mileage savings of up to 52% with route planning software.
In line with the aspect of costs, you and an employee can save yourself and an employee overtime. This is beneficial on two levels: Everyone is happy to be able to get off work on time. As a company, you also save on the additional compensation otherwise incurred for overtime.
With a delivery service, there is often more than just one type of vehicle. In addition to the classic delivery car, there are usually also trucks with and without loading ramps or even cargo bikes. Each type of vehicle sometimes only supplies specific customers (private customers in the city center, supermarkets, daycare centers, etc.). With professional software, the various types of vehicles can be stored. The vehicle types are then automatically taken into account when planning a trip.
Deliveries with such special cargo (such as dangerous goods) often require employee skills. You can store employee skills directly in the software. They are then automatically taken into account when creating the tour.
What happens when you have to plan many delivery stops at once? Is one coming planning software not at their limits? Doesn't planning take infinitely long at some point?
As shown in the numerical example above, the number of routes increases exponentially with every additional delivery stop. Of course, the question is whether software also quickly reaches its limits. Incredibly long computing times are to be expected, efficiency falls by the wayside. In principle, this is true, but professional route planning software uses intelligent algorithms that find the optimal routes in the shortest possible time, even with many delivery stops — just like the FreightPilot.
Professional planning also indirectly makes the customer feel valued. This is because customers can — if requested by the delivery service — incorporate their preferred dates into the planning. So will the Customer journey optimized for customer satisfaction. And customer satisfaction is one of the most important goods to achieve, especially today.
You're viewing: One Route planning software is something of a digital all-rounder. A digital all-rounder that should definitely be part of your delivery service's repertoire. With Freight pilot Can we not only help you with the professional Route planning support.
Freight pilot supports you with all work steps involved in your delivery service. With FrachtPilot, you can get started right away. As clever software for Delivery services We attach particular importance to a simple and efficient operation laid. All of your Work steps are digitally supported. Regardless of whether orders are placed via webshop / mobile app, inventory management, Route planning, renditions or reckoning.
Do you want to know more? Just arrange a personal consultation under the following link. Free of charge and without obligation. We're looking forward to seeing you!
