Translating Delivery Visibility Into ROI

What does real delivery visibility look like? It’s not just tracking a truck on a map via GPS. And it’s not just gathering data and storing it in the depths of a handful of disparate systems.

Real visibility—in delivery management especially—is about accessing the data you need quickly. That means that not only are you capturing everything from order details to customer requirements to driver locations and order statuses to proof of delivery, but you’re also getting it to the right people at the right time. 

How are you making that happen? It starts with where and how information is presented. If you have a customer support team member who gets a call from a customer and wants to know that customer’s order details, delivery status, and a history of previous communications, true visibility means giving that customer support rep the ability to see all of that within a single app with just a few clicks. 

Making Visibility a Reality

What said above goes for everyone from the dispatcher to the CEO. A single screen should tell you most of what you need to know about how delivery runs are unfolding, and you should be able to drill down into details from there. 

Notifications and alerts can also play an important role here as well. By configuring specific triggers that will automatically alert the right person (whether that’s alerting a dispatcher any time a live delivery ETA gets too far outside the time window or alerting an executive when a new planned vs actual report is ready), you can ensure that the right person sees the right data without having to hunt for. 

Integration is critical —as is the ability to leverage a UX that’s intuitive and keeps people from turning to shadow IT. When you can put all the pieces in place to make all this a reality, you can start tackling logistics costs head on. 

Turning Visibility into Logistics Clarity and Control

Knowledge is power. Nowhere is that more true than in delivery and logistics management. That’s why visibility is such an important first step—but a first step implies a number of other subsequent steps. In this case, those steps represent the processes and workflows that you can put in place to actually get measurable value out of your visibility. 

One of the most straightforward examples is exception management. When you can track deliveries in real time—including instant access to proof of delivery, live ETAs, and configurable alerts for specific exceptions—you can manage exceptions more quickly and effectively. 

Here’s how you make that happen:

• Give dispatchers, managers, and customer support teams access to a live delivery dashboard that enables them to track deliveries at a glance. 
• Set an SOP for how different should respond to different exceptions. Clearly define who reaches out to the customer when a specific trigger occurs
• Centralize the interactions with that customer for a complete audit trail so that nothing happens in a silo and there’s no single point of failure for keeping a particular customer happy.  

In this way, you can keep deliveries on track that might otherwise have resulted in unplanned returns or delivery failures—reducing costs and making the entire process more efficient. 

It’s the same when you take a step back and come at your deliveries from a more strategic point of view. If you have visibility into your delivery costs at the planning stage, for instance, you can make informed choices about which delivery routing and scheduling options project to have the lowest cost. You can use those projections as a baseline, and then compare planned and actual costs to see how things played out. 

Taken together, these tactics bring you from a place of making plans and hoping for the best to having real control over your logistics costs. 

5 Key Drivers of Reduced Costs in Logistics

When it comes to reducing delivery and logistics costs, visibility plays a huge role—especially when you’re able to use it to shine a light on the most important areas of cost optimization. 

Here are some of the key areas of focus for logistics operators when it comes to powering cost reduction:

• Route efficiency: Fuel costs and driver pay are the two most expensive parts of carrying out last mile deliveries, so anything you can do to reduce those can have a significant impact. This starts with gaining enough visibility into your fleet capacity and parameters that you can make the most efficient possible routes. A powerful route optimization engine is an absolute must for making this happen. It can take a lot of the guesswork out of ensuring efficient routes, while speeding the whole process up considerably. 
• Route execution and performance: The world’s most efficient route is only as cost-effective as its execution. That’s why customer experience management and driver management can be such important parts of the cost optimization process—the former helps ensure that customers are actually at the delivery site when the truck shows up, and the latter puts drivers in a position to do their jobs effectively. Here, AI can play a role by providing drivers with location-based intelligence for each stop and giving customers instant answers to questions about order and delivery statuses.
• Labor and effort: We’ve covered driver hours already, but if you can put your entire team in a position to work more efficiently, you can add additional cost savings on top of that. This has historically been difficult to do, especially for businesses that are scaling up. But the right technology can go a long way. The best practice here is to give time back to your teams by automating as much as possible (routing, dispatching, customer notifications) and streamlining workflows with the use of technology. Eliminate manual data entry wherever you can—including across different logistics touchpoints. Increasingly, you can also let AI handle some of the most repetitive work that your team has to deal with, e.g. responding to “where’s-my-order” messages from customers. When you have the technology tools in place to speed these processes up, you can accomplish more with a leaner team. 
• Technology spend: This might seem counterintuitive, but right-sizing your technology deployments is a great way to keep your costs in check. And when you have real strategic visibility into every touchpoint from the first mile to the last, you can stave off shadow IT deployments and centralize your capabilities in a smaller number of total solutions. When you have a source of truth for delivery management that actually gets the job done, you can cut out redundant IT spending. 

Conclusion: Reducing Costs Through Increased Delivery Visibility 

When you operationalize delivery visibility, you can put yourself in a position to significantly reduce delivery costs. The trick is to find ways of directly integrating that visibility into the systems and workflows where they can have the biggest impact. 

Making that happen starts with the right technology. Look for delivery management software that’s agile, intelligent, and highly-connected, and you’ll be on the fast track to turning visibility into increased delivery control and lower logistics costs across the board.