Benefits of an AI-Powered Delivery Route App

The question of how to plan delivery routes effectively is more pressing than ever. We don’t need to belabor the point about rising labor costs, driver shortages, or price and market volatility—suffice it to say that if you can find a way to cut down on delivery costs using route optimization, you absolutely should.

Given the inherent complexity of last mile delivery (a process that has its own mathematical problem named after it) that’s easier said than done. 

Planning routes using spreadsheets and maps is both time-consuming and inefficient. Despite long hours, human planners generally can’t account for the different variables and business constraints that affect delivery times by hand

Of course, if you don’t put in the time and effort, you end up having multiple delivery drivers being sent to the same neighborhood or criss-crossing one another’s routes over and over again. Or worse, you end up consistently delivering orders late. 

Luckily, modern technology offers planners a way to plan delivery routes in a more time-efficient—and accuracy—way. The question is: what separates the most valuable delivery route apps from the ones that don’t lead to positive ROI?

How Delivery Route Apps Improve Last Mile Deliveries

Delivery route planners calculate the best routes for a given set of orders so they can be delivered to the end customers as cost-effectively and quickly as possible. Of course, “best” means different things to different people. 

This might mean cutting down the total driving time for drivers who are making multiple stops, or it might mean ensuring on-time delivery at a high rate, even if that means losing a little efficiency. Either way, you need to consider a host of different variables, such as vehicle load capacity, delivery time windows, driver schedules, traffic congestion, road conditions, and weather conditions.

The right delivery route planner maximizes the number of delivery stops drivers can make, while enabling you to deliver on time consistently and reduce overall cost per delivery. Route planning software should help businesses improve their operational efficiency, save time, lower costs, and increase revenue. 

Here’s a breakdown of some of the most impactful benefits:

Shorter delivery times

Modern delivery route software uses advanced algorithms to find optimal routes for large numbers of stops. Route optimization enables fleets to save huge amounts of time for each delivery. At the same time, it enables you to shorten delivery lead times, which improves customer satisfaction. 

A modern solution also allows fleet managers, dispatchers, and planners to manually adjust routes even after they have been optimized, e.g. for last minute adjustments or to handle late orders and order changes—meaning planning and execution can be more closely linked.  

Streamlined driver productivity

If you no longer have to print out assignments to be handed one by one to drivers, you can save both time and money. The right solution will digitize and automate driver assignments and manifests, allowing drivers to know where and when to go and how to get there via a comprehensive mobile app. It will also automatically dispatch the routes and manifests to drivers as soon as routes are finalized. 

Instructions for each stop should be given to the drivers via the app as well, as well as options for capturing signatures and proof of delivery. Modern delivery management solutions can even offer AI-powered voice assistants to provide context and intelligence ahead of each stop to improve delivery execution. 

Improved customer experience

When it comes to last mile delivery, modern customers have more stringent demands than ever before:

• Same day delivery
• Full visibility
• Real-time updates
• Ability to choose delivery time slots and to reschedule
• Easy communication with drivers
• Last-minute changes

An efficient route planner helps make this possible—boosting customer delivery experience in the process. The right planner will offer real-time tracking capabilities so fleet managers can easily identify where and what the drivers are doing while customers can see where their orders are at every step of the process. 

Real-time visibility and updates eliminate the need for customers to call the customer service team to ask for updates regarding their orders, which can save significant time and money. At the same time, enabling customers to get in touch directly with the drivers also minimizes failed and late deliveries and allows for more agile, responsive delivery management.

Continuous improvement

Delivery route optimization is not a one-time thing. You have to monitor your delivery operations to ensure that your route plans are always working for you. Luckily, most advanced delivery route apps have built-in reporting capabilities to help you monitor areas for improvement. 

Robust reporting allows you to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) such as service time, on-time rates, successful deliveries, idle time, customer feedback ratings, planned stops vs. actual, and more in order to set benchmarks and iterate over time.  

Cost savings

The impact of all of these benefits adds up to one crucial outcome: significant time and cost savings for your team.

For starters, you save time and money on the routing process itself. The best route optimization apps can speed up routing time by 50% or more, which translates directly into labor cost savings—which can then be reinvested in more value-additive tasks for your team. 

The routes themselves ensure that your drivers have to travel fewer miles per stop and spend less time on the road per delivery. This means a huge reduction in fuel costs and driver pay, two of the largest line items on a typical last mile delivery balance sheet. 

And, last but not least, improved on-time performance (thanks to increased ETA accuracy) means a higher first attempt delivery rate (FADR), reducing the costs associated with redelivery attempts. 

3 Keys to Ensuring Effective Route Planning

The right delivery route planning solution can go a long way in helping you find the best routes for your fleet. However, not all solutions are created equal. To avoid being stuck with poor route plans, unreliable ETAs, or poor integration, there are 3 key things to look for:

Reliable integrations

Reliable data is one of the most crucial elements for optimization. Low quality data—or data that’s simply missing or unavailable—makes it difficult or impossible to keep your delivery plans.

That’s why it’s so crucial to find a solution that can integrate bidirectionally with other enterprise software. This enables you to ensure that your routing portal is taking in all of the data that it needs to work around business constraints and optimize for the right things. On the flip side, it’s important to be able to share route plans with other stakeholders within the company. Avoiding data silos is a must. 

Scalable processes and architecture 

If you’re an enterprise-sized business, you need a solution that won’t slow to a crawl when you need to manage a large number of route plans at once or process large quantities of data. Here, you may be better off seeking out a cloud-based delivery route app rather than one that requires an on-prem deployment. 

Artificial intelligence

At the end of the day, the absolute most optimal routes are the ones that enable your drivers to deliver on time. This requires setting accurate ETAs for every sequence of stops—no small feat, even with a route planning solution. 

This is where AI and machine learning come in: if your software can learn about the effects of different drivers, loads, traffic patterns, service types, etc. on your ETAs and improve them over time, you can ensure deliveries that actually meet your customer’s needs. 

Optimizing Your Routes with the Right Delivery Route App 

In the end, the best route optimization software is the one that helps the human planner to find optimal routes quickly. This not only helps you to optimize routes, it also enables key decision-makers to ask smarter questions and gain valuable insights on fleet operations. If you can find the right solution, it can be a true game-changer. 

Don’t settle for delivery route apps that aren’t built to handle the needs of modern last mile delivery organizations. Software solutions that offer performance, integration, speed, and accuracy are out there—and they can have a huge impact on your delivery operations.