The Ultimate Guide to Dispatch Automation Software

Dispatching drivers and technicians by hand is woefully inefficient. Not only does manual dispatching mean that your team spends inordinate amounts of time printing and handing out route manifest to drivers, it also means that during the actual deliveries you’re likely to be flying blind with no way of knowing how a given route is progressing.

Luckily, there is an alternative: dispatch automation software. This type of solution does what it says on the tin—it helps you to automate the tedious manual processes associated with dispatching routes to drivers. 

Obviously, this has the power to save you time and money, but why limit your ambitions when it comes to optimizing your delivery operations? If you’re digitizing the dispatch process, you can go several steps further and overhaul your routing, customer experience, driver management, and more, potentially all with the same software solution. 

The key is finding a solution that addresses dispatching both head on and as part of the larger whole that is your last mile logistics process. 

Who Needs Dispatch Automation Software?

The obvious answer here is: anyone who is currently dispatching by hand needs dispatch automation software by definition. But let's dig a little deeper into the challenges and hurdles that indicate a strong need for dispatch automation. 

Here are a few key indicators that you need to digitize, automate, and otherwise bolster your dispatching process:

• You’re wasting precious time printing out paper dispatch slips and route manifests
• Drivers aren’t able to update their delivery statuses easily during their routes
• Customers can’t access live delivery tracking information and have to call in and talk to support
• Proof of delivery is paper-based and prone to go missing
• Your drivers aren’t consistently delivering on time or you have no idea whether they’re delivering on time
• Customer support and sales teams can’t answer customer questions in real time
• You’re not getting as much out of your delivery capacity as you think you should
• There’s no reliable, standardized audit trail across your logistics processes

Not all of these will apply in every situation, but if you’re ticking a few of these boxes there’s a good chance that it’s time to upgrade your processes and the technology that underpins them. 

How Dispatch Automation Software Powers ROI in Logistics

Of course, there’s no point in implementing dispatch automation software if you’re expecting to get a strong return on your investment. After all, change management is often difficult, and getting your teams stood up on a new software solution requires an investment not just of monthly subscription costs but of time and effort across the board. 

Luckily, the right dispatch automation software can help you reduce costs right off the bat, and can power more systemic improvements in logistics performance over time. 

Here are some of the ways that that can happen:

• Reduced physical paperwork: Simply put, printing out thousands of slips of paper to manage your deliveries is always going to be time consuming. It’s also going to eat up resources and increase the possibility of errors. Eliminate the manual process and you eliminate the associated costs immediately.  
• Faster routing and dispatching: If you can combine route optimization and dispatching into a single step (more on that later), such that your drivers automatically get routes dispatched to their mobile devices as soon as they’re finalized, you can reduce the time it takes your team to perform these processes significantly—reducing back-office costs in the process. 
• Improved exception management: When you digitize the dispatching process, you can also gain much greater visibility into driver statuses on the road. This means that your customer support teams can answer customer questions more quickly and easily, and they can respond in real time to delivery exceptions that crop up on the road. This, in turn, improves delivery performance which reduces costs and encourages repeat business.  
• More efficient routes and schedules: Streamlining your route optimization and dispatching means that you can leverage routing technology that’s faster, more accurate, and more efficient than manual planning can ever hope to be. This means that you’re able to dispatch routes to drivers that are 10% more efficient or better, resulting in reduced time and fuel costs per delivery. This helps you get more out of your delivery capacity and improve your delivery performance even further, which reduces costs associated with unplanned returns and redelivery attempts. 
• Improved compliance and audit trails: One of the most frustrating things about running a delivery operation by hand is that getting the information you need, when you need it can quickly turn into a scavenger hunt around the office. Or just a headache-inducing amount of time spent staring at spreadsheets. When you digitize the process, you can also digitally capture proof of delivery and other compliance information in real time to automatically create a complete delivery audit trail across your network. This saves you time in reporting, it makes it easier to get paid for the deliveries you make (customers have a much harder time disputing a delivery when there’s photographic proof being emailed to them automatically), and in general it brings you much closer to data-driven logistics. 
• Better customer experience: It’s hard to put an exact dollar amount on improving customer delivery experience, but there are a few considerations for thinking about how CX translates into ROI: first, if you can improve customer engagement such that customers are more likely to be home to receive delivery, you can boost first-attempt delivery rates and decrease unplanned returns. Second, great experiences translate into repeat buying and even positive reviews and word of mouth, boosting your sales figures down the line. Those are just the tip of the iceberg, and when you digitize your processes, you make it much easier to level up customer experience enough to generate ROI.  

What to Look for in Dispatch Automation

To make sure you’re actually getting the level of ROI we’ve been talking about, you have to make sure you’re implementing the right dispatch automation software. 

What does that look like in practice? It starts with finding a solution that does more than just automate your dispatching process. Because dispatching is so integrated with every other piece of the last mile logistics puzzle, it should be housed within the same solution that handles your route optimization, customer experience management, and driver management. 

When you have a single, automated solution that can handle the entire last mile logistics journey from end to end, you can turn dispatching into a key area of efficiency within a larger process. 

Make sure you’re leveraging software that prioritizes visibility and integration, so that your dispatch automation can be parlayed into real-time delivery tracking and post-delivery documentation across the board. 

The goal is to ensure that you can connect your last mile logistics to your larger business systems and goals, and a solution that’s built with integrations in mind is key. SaaS technology can go a long way here—as can innovation centered around AI. 

Many AI use cases are overhyped, but AI can improve customer experience via chat agent, streamline driver workflows with location-based intelligence, and even proactively suggest route changes to dispatchers at the planning stage. If you can find a solution that has a proven track record, you can start future-proofing your digitized dispatching and logistics process—and set yourself up for serious returns in the process. 

Conclusion

Finding the right dispatch automation software doesn’t have to be difficult. If you keep the ROI drivers and best practices above in mind, you separate the wheat from the chaff and select a solution that will successfully cut unwanted manual effort and paperwork out of your last mile logistics process.