Transport Planning Software for the Last Mile

If your business grapples with last mile logistics—and you’re looking to digitize, update, or otherwise improve your processes—you might be thinking that you need transport planning software: and you’d be right.

Unfortunately, that’s such a broad category that it can be tough to separate the real contenders from the solutions that aren’t even in the right ballpark. What you don’t need is the type of transport planning software that local municipalities use to plan their public transport networks; and depending on your exact challenges, you might not need the kind of transport planning software that businesses use to compare freight rates. 

If what you actually need is transport planning software that helps you optimize your transport network with an eye towards ensuring an efficient last mile—plus tracking deliveries and gaining visibility and clear documentation across the board—you’ve come to the right place. 

In this post, we’ll go over the ways that this kind of transport planning software can impact the last mile, what to look for in a transportation solution, and how to implement last mile transport planning software to get the most out of your delivery and logistics network.   

How Transport Planning Software Impacts Last Mile Logistics

Like we said, transport planning is an umbrella that can encompass a lot of different functionalities, from planning bus routes and collecting community feedback to planning delivery routes and tracking execution. 

When it comes to last mile logistics, your transport planning software should help you:

• Schedule delivery orders as the relevant inventory becomes available
• Track first and middle mile transfers
• Optimize delivery (and service) routes based on customer needs, delivery capacity, vehicle requirements, and more
• Manage third party deliveries and delivery contractors
• Track trucks, drivers, and deliveries over the course of the process
• Capture proof of delivery and other documentation
• Connect with customers to ensure a high quality delivery experience
• Track delivery cost metrics, delivery performance, and other KPIs

Taken individually, all of these capabilities can help you ensure efficient transportation planning, scheduling, execution. Taken as a cohesive whole, they can put you in a position to boost transportation efficiency and create a more connected logistics process all around.

What to Look for in Routing Software for Transportation

If you’re a logistics organization—i.e. anyone who grapples with getting delivery or service orders to their end customers—your transportation software needs to cover the entire last mile from end to end. And it needs to do so in such a way that promotes connectivity across your entire technology stack and all related processes, all while empowering each individual team to perform its functions effectively and collaborate easily. 

It really is a tall order. But there are a few green flags to look out for that signal that a particular transportation scheduling software solution is worth the cost:

• Robust integration capabilities: Simply put, the best transportation software is the one that connects easily to your ERP and other solutions so you can gain a comprehensive view of all your operations without the risk of data silos. API connections and out-of-the-box integrations can help you ensure that everyone is singing off the same sheet of music across the whole organization. 
• AI-powered capabilities: Not all AI is created equal, but a vendor that can show you a track record of effective AI is going to be in a position to help you improve your logistics operations over time. AI can help you improve ETA accuracy in transport scheduling and routing to 98% or better, and it can help respond to simple (but common) customer inquiries and empower drivers with contextual intelligence. 
• Rapid rollout and implementation support: You don’t want to partner with a transportation solution provider who’s going to leave you high and dry when you need their support. Look for a solution provider who can show you a track record of effective implementations and rollouts. 
• Ease of use: There’s a saying in the realm of public transportation: “frequency is freedom.” In other words, when buses come along every five minutes, riders don’t have to stress out about them and plan their whole trips around timetables. It’s the same in this part of the world of transportation when your software is easy to use. You shouldn’t be beholden to an outdated route plan just because it would be too difficult to change it. 
• Coverage of all roles and functions: The number of different functional areas that interact with transportation logistics is huge. Everyone from sales to accounting to warehouse management is going to need to keep an eye on at least some part of the delivery process, and the right routing software for transportation will make that happen. This can include a separate warehouse loader app, a dedicated sales app, and end-to-end visibility for anyone who needs it. 
• Capabilities for your entire transport network: In other words, you should be able to gain visibility into 3rd party and contractor deliveries just as easily as deliveries carried out by your own fleet. By the same token, you should be able to gain visibility into first and middle mile transfers as needed to ensure connectivity between different stages of the journey. 

If you can find transport scheduling software that ticks all five of these boxes, you can set yourself up for improved visibility. Not only that, you can create connected workflows that go beyond simple transportation routing optimization to ultimately tackle the entire logistics journey from end to end. 

Delighting Customers with Transport Planning Software 

All of this advice is going to be crucial for finding the right technology, but it’s important not to let any of the technical requirements get in the way of your number one priority: keeping your customers happy. 

Transportation plans obviously need to be efficient. You need to find a way to make sure you’re getting the most out of your delivery capacity (and your third party deliveries if applicable) and ensuring cost efficiency. But none of that is going to guarantee success if it doesn’t translate into deliveries and services that actually work for your customers. 

That’s why one of the keys to getting value out of your transport planning software is to make sure you’re optimizing customer experience as well as transportation costs. 

These things might seem orthogonal, but actually they go hand in:

• Transportation routing impacts your ability to deliver what the customer ordered within the time window. The better the routing, the more accurate your timelines and the happier your customers. 
• The level of visibility that transportation planning software can provide can be leveraged externally to give customers more visibility into their deliveries. This level of visibility can improve confidence and decrease missed deliveries and customer-not-at-home situations. 
• Connectivity and two-way communication with customers is key to ensuring that customers are in the loop and know what to expect. Your software should give you capabilities for making that happen in an automated, repeatable, and visible way. 

Creating a Connected Last Mile

At the end of the day, improved customer experience means better delivery performance, happier customers, and more repeat business. It’s a no-brainer as far as investments in your logistics success are concerned. 

That’s why at DispatchTrack we offer a suite of customer experience tools that are fully integrated with our transport scheduling and routing functionality. The result is that our users save time and money while improving their NPS scores. We’d love to walk you through how we do it—just drop in your info and one of our experts will reach out.