5 Benefits of a Digital Dispatch Platform for Logistics Management

If you’re reading this article, the odds are pretty good that you already know how important leveraging a digital dispatch platform is for powering smarter delivery and logistics management. Nearly anyone who deals with last mile deliveries—in other ones, anyone who has to dispatch orders to drivers in order to keep their operations running—needs technology for managing that process within the larger context of logistics management.

The alternative is managing dispatches by hand, which is a recipe for slow, disconnected, and uncertain processes. Any time you bring a piece of paper into the equation in what is now fundamentally a digital world of logistics, you make it harder for information—to say nothing of goods and services—to move around in a way that works for you, your teams, and your customers. 

Simply put, the right digital dispatch platform is a must-have for taking control of your logistics operations in the last mile and beyond. 

What Should Your Digital Dispatch Platform Offer?

Dispatching might seem like a simple concept, but in point of fact it touches on so many other aspects of logistics management. That’s why “platform” is the operative word here. The right software will handle not just dispatching, but a host of interconnected activities from routing to customer experience management. Not only that, but it will connect seamlessly with other solutions up and down the supply chain.  

To really get the most out of your digital dispatching operations, you should find a platform that offers a few specific capabilities:

• Intelligent route optimization: Getting it right with the routes and schedules you’re dispatching to drivers is just as important as the dispatching process itself, at least from an operational efficiency perspective. To ensure efficient delivery routes, you need route optimization capabilities that are designed to turn complex requirements into routes and schedules that work for your drivers, your customers, and your bottom line. 
• Customer engagement capabilities: The “right time” for your customers is something that only makes sense in context—in other words, if you’ve communicated with them about when to expect the delivery. If you don’t have the tools to send customers notifications and alerts (and to chat with them in real time), you won’t be able to pair efficient route execution with high customer satisfaction rates. 
• Total strategic visibility: When you do your dispatching on paper, the delivery process turns into a black box the moment your driver leaves the distribution center. This is a recipe for chaos on the day of delivery. Conversely, when you track deliveries across the board from the moment your drivers start their days (or even earlier with strong first and middle mile data integration), you can effortlessly manage exceptions and keep deliveries on track. 
• Digital proof of delivery: One of the key ways that you can turn visibility into concrete value is with thorough, digitized delivery documentation, especially in the form of proof of delivery. When your drivers can instantly capture photos, signatures, and notes at delivery sites, you can complete your delivery audit trails and get paid more quickly (while avoiding false liability claims).

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it should suggest how many other parts of the last mile process touch on dispatching—and how crucial it is to connect them within a single platform. 

5 Ways Your Dispatching Software Should Boost Logistics Efficiency

Once you’ve selected and deployed the right digital dispatch platform, you should be able to achieve ROI rapidly. The right solution will offer powerful capabilities and integrations that directly impact delivery and logistics efficiency. 

Here are a few ways that the right platform does precisely that:

1. Reduced miles driven

The right digital dispatch platform will offer comprehensive route optimization capabilities, as well as the functionality drivers need to do their jobs effectively: a robust driver mobile app, total delivery visibility for customers, and even AI-powered location briefings for drivers. When you make this happen, you enable your drivers to drive significantly fewer miles per delivery and make fewer redelivery attempts. The result is a huge reduction in fuel cost and driver pay (two of the top expenses on your typical last mile balance sheet).

2. Less time spent routing and planning

Not only are you able to dispatch more efficient routes to drivers with the right technology, you’re also able to generate those routes in radically less time. Even when you’re dealing with complex routing needs and parameters, the right solution will enable you to optimize routes in a matter of minutes—giving a huge amount of time back to your teams. This is on top of having given time back to your drivers, which can be reinvested in getting more out of your fleet capacity. 

3. Reduction in phone time

By the time you’re dealing with even a couple of dozen trucks in your fleet, keeping customers informed the old fashioned way—reaching out on the phone—can require entire call centers’ worth of people. And this is only exacerbated when customers don’t have visibility into deliveries and need to call in to ask about their order statuses. The right digital dispatch platform eliminates the need for nearly all of that phone time by automating customer communications and offering real-time delivery tracking. Here, AI can enhance this impact even further by automatically answering simple customer questions like “where’s my order?”  

4. Faster exception management

When you can see what’s happening across every truck, route, and delivery from a single dashboard within your dispatching software, you can spot orders that need your attention and act on them rapidly. This helps you to salvage deliveries that might otherwise have gone awry, and to smooth over poor customer experiences—sometimes this falls under the heading of damage control, but raising your customer satisfaction floor can be nearly as impactful as raising the ceiling. Ultimately, the added efficiency here comes from the speed at which your teams can access the data they need at precisely the moment that they need it. 

5. Decreased delivery lead times

There are two ways in which the kind of technology we’re discussing can shorten delivery lead times: It can speed up the route planning process (as we discussed above), which enables you to route later in the day and thus have a later order cutoff time. At the same time, it can also help you centralize logistics data from the first and last mile, meaning you have enough visibility to schedule orders based on up-to-date data about when the relevant goods will arrive at the right distribution center. Both of these can help you shrink your warehouse footprint, boost your order velocity, and ultimately boost efficiency. 

Conclusion: The Power of Modern Dispatching Technology

The right digital dispatch platform can be a huge boon to logistics efficiency—assuming it has the features and capabilities you need to make life easier for your teams and visibility the default. This may be easier said than done, but the right platforms are out there.

Look for something with a strong track record of driving ROI. The best solutions will be able to help you deploy the solution quickly, integrate it into your tech stack, and continually innovate to make sure your capabilities are keeping up with new challenges in the market. All of that makes a potent recipe for improved logistics management across the board.