Last Mile Delivery Analytics: Getting More out of Your Data

Last mile delivery analytics form the basis of data-driven decision making in last mile and supply chain operations. You can’t optimize what you can’t measure, and you can’t improve processes without targets for improvement. On an even higher level, there’s some analytics data that last mile delivery operators need simply to ensure that a given delivery run has gone (or is going) according to plan.

At the same time, this is the type of thing that can be hard to get a handle on—especially if you’re starting from scratch. If you’re using last mile delivery technology, there’s a good chance that the data you need in order to improve your operations is already being collected. It’s just a matter of getting value out of it. 

How do you make that happen? That’s exactly what we’ll cover in this post:

What Is Last Mile Delivery Analytics?

Last mile delivery analytics can be a broad term—but generally speaking it encompasses any process that involves turning your delivery and logistics data into actionable insights. Usually, your last mile delivery solution will have some in-built capabilities for helping you visualize performance and understand the underlying numbers beneath your operations.

Your technology may also offer connections to business intelligence software solutions where you can do even more with the data you’re collecting. In either case, this is a potentially extremely fertile area for most businesses. When your last mile delivery process is digitized, it inherently produces a huge amount of data—when you have the tools in place to collect and manage that data effectively, you can leverage it into smart improvements to your logistics processes over time.

How to Get the Most out of Your Data

The key to getting value out of your data is to make sure that the right data is in the right place at the right time. This might mean centralizing information within a last mile logistics solution, or it might mean connecting that solution to Power BI, Tableau, or some other business intelligence software. You want something that can act as a single source of truth, which means finding a way to weed out silos and make sure that all of the information that gets generated as a result of—or leading into—last mile logistics processes winds up in the same place in a way that you can use. 

This can get complicated quickly—but it doesn’t have to. Even relatively simple API integrations can help you create an ecosystem where you have the data you need, when you need it. 

For instance, if you have a last mile delivery solution that comes with a driver mobile app that’s capturing timestamps and geo stamps, as well as pictures, signatures, and notes, for proof of delivery, it should be simple enough to automatically associate that data with the relevant order within your system. This way, you have complete order information within a single screen. 

From there, if your last mile solution can generate invoices based on your delivery data, you can use an API connection to export those invoices to your accounting software. Along the way, you can accumulate data on things like accessorial charges, incomplete deliveries, etc. to improve your processes over time. 

By the same token, if you have real-time telematics data being captured on your deliveries, you should be able to connect your last mile solution and your telematics solution to enhance your delivery data with speed, temperature, precise locations, and other information. Again, this helps companies identify patterns and get smarter about delivery runs. 

For example, if you’re focused on fuel consumption, you can drill down on how effectively your drivers are sticking to the most efficient routes. Likewise, you can gain valuable insights into delivery times by comparing planned and actual arrivals on site.

What to Track in Your Last Mile Operations

A connected delivery management ecosystem is key to getting your last mile delivery analytics into shape. But what should you actually be tracking to monitor performance and assess the health of your delivery operations and improve performance over time? 

Cost-per-route/cost-per-case

There’s no sense in beating around the bush—delivery costs are some of the most important KPIs for most businesses, and they often lack visibility into costs at the planning stage. When you can leverage preexisting delivery cost data to generate cost estimates per route and per case at the routing stage, you can make data driven decisions about how you roll out your routes. The potential impact on overall delivery costs here is significant. 

Total cost to serve

Ideally, in addition to having visibility into delivery costs at the routing stage, you’ll also be able to incorporate information from sales, merchandising, and potentially other functions. Since customer service doesn’t start or end with the delivery in most cases, this information can help you get a clearer picture of the total costs that go into serving any given customer. The trick is to ensure that your last mile delivery solution has support for these other roles, so that you can ensure accurate data across the entire customer journey. 

Route efficiency/density

This is a KPI where leveraging data about trends will be more important than the raw number—after all, running the absolute densest possible route isn’t always the goal. That said, you don’t want to be in a position where your routes are getting less efficient over time (e.g. because of changing traffic patterns or new customer requirements), whether that’s because it’s difficult to update as your needs change or because it’s difficult to assess the impacts of changes before you make them. You should be able to track your route efficiency over time and take steps to improve when you see it dipping. Of course, making this last part happen depends in large part upon your route optimization capabilities being able to keep up with your business. 

Schedule confirmations

A lot of what we’re talking about in terms of last mile data analytics comes down to analyzing delivery performance after the fact—but there are a lot of metrics that are important to track before the delivery run even gets underway. For instance, by proactively tracking the number of customers who have confirmed their delivery schedules along each route, you can turn up potential no-shows before the trucks are loaded—sometimes even before they’ve been routed. The ability to simply check a report to see which of your deliveries are confirmed and which are at risk of being undeliverable doesn’t rely on cutting edge technology, but it’s exactly the sort of thing that can have a huge impact on your operational costs in the last mile. 

Perfect order performance

Some people will refer to this one as “on time in full” or “productive delivery” or something similar. But the upshot is the same: one number that shows the percentage of deliveries that have gone off without a hitch—every item was delivered in the right condition at the right time and no exceptions were recorded. Your benchmarks here will depend a lot on your industry and your customers, but the ability to see this information at a glance within your last mile delivery system has serious value. Last mile delivery analytics are all about helping you find areas to improve performance, enhance the overall customer experience, and reduce delivery costs. The ability to visualize this kind of number at a glance and work to improve can be a huge help and provide a competitive advantage.  

Net promoter score

The net promoter score has its critics as a metric, so you could easily swap this one in for another customer satisfaction KPI—just as long as you keep the focus squarely on the customer. Last mile delivery success is all about keeping the customer happy without breaking the bank. But if you can’t pull off the first part of that balancing act, all the cost-efficiency in the world isn’t going to translate into success. 

To track this, you’ll need to capture customer feedback right after the delivery or service has been completed. Text alerts asking for feedback via survey can be a big help here and can enable you to establish a baseline score to help you orient your efforts. 

There’s no single metric that can encompass your entire last mile delivery operation, but finding the right last mile analytics for your business can be crucial to ongoing success. When you have the right data in the right place, that’s exactly what you can make happen.