Why the Right Routing System Is the Key to Cost-Effective Deliveries

A lot has to go right in the route optimization process if you want to keep costs down and ensure customer satisfaction. You need to know when orders are ready to schedule, you need visibility into your fleet and driver availability, and you need a routing process that’s quick enough to be practical in the fast-paced world of modern delivery management.This is easier said than achieved, especially since deliveries cause an additional flurry of activities in the supply chain. You need to make sure the goods are at the right distribution center at the right time, create delivery routes that effectively factor in service time and other concerns, keep customers informed about when to expect deliveries, and track deliveries in real time.

Doing all of this consistently in order to ensure on-time deliveries requires agile, connected, and intelligent tools. Luckily, the right routing system can increase delivery performance by creating precise and achievable route plans.

How Routing Systems Can Save You Money and Time

Whether updating your routing is the first step on your digital transformation or your last, it’s a key piece of the puzzle. The best route optimization software helps you streamline an otherwise thorny process, get more out of your fleet, and ensure happy customers in spite of growing cost pressures. 

Here’s a few of the ways you can save time and money by implementing the right routing system:

Smarter routing and scheduling 

Modern routing algorithms can take into account a huge number of different variables affecting delivery timing. These variables might include weather, road conditions and average road speed, and service time expectations. They can also factor in any customer requirements. From there, you can automatically generate routes based on the availability of drivers and vehicles.

The right routing system will also consider driving skills and vehicles in planning. This helps ensure that routes are planned at the individual driver level, based on availability and skill sets for each driver. Without incorporating drivers' skills, dispatchers are forced to adjust routes manually to ensure that each job is being done by a driver who has the right capabilities (e.g. installation and assembly), losing out on the efficiency that comes from well-designed delivery plans.

The right routing optimization software also considers vehicle requirements. This way, you can make sure that the right vehicles are available for the job such as the right size for road restrictions, non-refrigerated and refrigerated trucks, lift gates, to name just a few factors. Failing to consider drivers’ skills, availability, and vehicle requirements can lead to delays before the route is even started.

Data integration and visibility

Highly-connected route optimization software can update delivery ETAs in real time according to actual tracking events. As a result, the accuracy of your plans and delivery schedules communicated to the customer will be automatically improved.

This kind of data integration and visibility also ensures effective real-time communication with customers. It is essential to communicate with customers proactively throughout the delivery day. Advanced routing systems offer real-time updates to customers about arrival dates or delays or problems with delivery ahead of time. The result is that you’re keeping your deliveries focused on the customer. 

Continuous improvement

The right software enables continuous improvement in delivery operations by way of artificial intelligence and machine learning trained on the data you collect during your deliveries. This helps you to more effectively estimate service times for different stops, for instance, improving ETA accuracy and therefore achieving right-time deliveries more frequently. 

Another way you can leverage intelligence is with smarter address mapping. Robust routing solutions include precise mapping and accurate location data. If your routing solution has more accurate geocoding, you can be sure the location of your customer is accurate. All of these features ensure that the drivers will find the delivery location quickly and easily so that they can get to the next stop as soon as possible.

Of course, your route optimization tool should also provide you with robust data visibility. When you aren't aware of a problem, it's hard to fix it—but when your delivery data is fully integrated across the rest of your logistics technology stack, you can standardize your processes and cut out the hair-raising manual effort that results from silos and manual data entry. 

A rising tide lifts all boats—which means the result of this increased connectivity in your routing system will extend to improvements in any number of related logistics processes. Over time, this can translate into serious cost savings. 

How to Choose Between Routing Systems

As you start optimizing your delivery routes, you need to drill down the minute details so that everything works flawlessly. You have a lot to contend with when planning your routes, such as customer requests, driver availability, and a variety of other factors contributing to an effective route planning process.

Here’s what to look for when choosing a routing system:

Configurable, automated routing

A robust truck routing software can help you radically decrease the amount of time generating delivery routes. A good system will generate truck route schedules automatically, with almost no human interaction required. With a planning system with that capability in place, you can simplify your job as well as cut down the distance your carriers drive, resulting in significant savings over time.

Naturally, there will be times when human planners need or want to refine the routes being generated by the system. With the right software, it will be easy to make adjustments to existing routes, and planners can implement changes with confidence that they’re starting from a route that’s already feasible and designed to minimize miles traveled.

Here, the key is to find software that gives you the freedom to codify your routing and scheduling knowledge within the routing engine—and the flexibility to route in the way that works best for you. In the past, it was hard to find solutions that didn’t require extensive training and reference materials in order to make your routing work for you, but now ease of use should be the norm. 

Total data integration

Effective route optimization is all about data—not just data about orders and stops, but data from other touchpoints in your logistics chain. That’s why the right routing system will offer seamless integration with your ERP system, your WMS, your telematics, or anything else you’re relying on to keep the wheels turning. 

Again, for some businesses this will be part of a larger digital transformation, and your route optimization should help carry that digital transformation further by extending your connectivity and data visibility. 

This should also translate into robust reporting. Ideally, you’d be able to customize your reports and run them on a recurring basis so that you have exactly the information you need, when you need it, to make the right decisions. Of course, this is all in addition to leveraging AI to turn all that data into better routing performance on a day-to-day level. 

Dynamic, accurate ETAs

Like we said above, your routing systems should be able to leverage AI into smarter performance—and one of the most important ways to do that is by utilizing live data to ensure consistently accurate delivery ETAs. This is something that not every routing solution can do, but it’s crucially important for meeting customer expectations. 

When your ETAs are wrong, customers are more likely to get their order late (or early). At the same time, consistently inaccurate ETAs virtually ensure that you’re not scheduling the right number of stops per route per day.  

Routing Systems Are the Cornerstone of Effective Last Mile Delivery

Robust routing systems can be a game-changer for your fleet operations and help you ensure accurate, right-time deliveries. If you can find the right solution with the right features and functionality, you can become more agile and connected, and ultimately delight your customers more consistently.