When logistics professionals think about what-if scenarios, they may be more likely to think of them in connection with processes that model the entire supply chain, not just the last mile. Even if you’re picturing them as a last-mile process, you may be imagining them as part of a slow, cumbersome planning process built on manual processes and calculations.
If this were a few years ago, thinking about what-if scenarios in those terms would be spot on. But technology has progressed a lot since then—and what-if scenarios can now be applied to last mile logistics processes quickly and efficiently to help planners model different ways of servicing customers across the last mile.
Of course, not all what-if plans are created equal. Performing these calculations quickly and accurately requires powerful computational abilities and strong predictive capabilities—usually requiring technologies like AI and machine learning that can produce more nuanced predictions than even the most experienced human planners. Luckily, modern cloud-based technology makes it possible to do exactly that.
This is a moment in which technology is fundamentally reshaping the way that we get goods from warehouses and distribution centers to their final destinations. As what-if planning technology is increasingly leveraged to tackle the problems of the final mile, what impacts could that have on distributors, wholesalers, and other delivery organizations?
Before we get into the impact that faster what-if scenarios can have for distribution operations, let’s talk a little bit about how they actually work. Traditionally, to run a what-if scenario, planners would have to model a particular delivery territory, including locations of distribution centers and customer delivery sites and customer and driver constraints around timing, capacity, day of week preferences, etc. From there, you’d have to tabulate likely travel times manually based on point-to-point calculations for drive times between stops.
It should be easy to imagine how time consuming this could be. Even with legacy software solutions that do some of the work for you, it can be a slow, tedious, and deeply inefficient process. Most businesses simply can’t afford to spend such a huge chunk of their time and resources on running these scenarios more than once or twice a year—which means that, most of the time, businesses wind up running territory plans that don’t directly address the current market conditions.
In the world of AI and cloud computing, however, these kinds of scenarios don’t have to take months. With the best last mile delivery software, you can test out dozens of different scenarios per day and choose the right one for your particular business case at the moment. This does more than just save time—it puts you in a position to adapt much more quickly to changes in your customer roster, commodity prices, transport network, driver roster, etc. In other words, you have the tools you need to stop running outdated plans.
Like we said above, increases in speed and power for this kind of technology means that it has new use cases that would have been difficult to imagine even a few years ago. There are a handful of things that might fall under that umbrella for delivery planners at large enterprises:
Again, these sorts of use cases are most powerful when plans can be run quickly. A long lead time between testing out possible scenarios has the potential to slow down your planning enough to virtually ensure inefficiencies. By contrast, testing out possible distribution scenarios in one sitting to determine the best fit for your needs right now can put you in a position to boost efficiency from end to end.
When you have the right technology for running what-if scenarios and generating optimal plans based on AI-powered predictions and historical data, you can become much more adaptable. But how do you know if you’re leveraging technology that’s up to the task? Here are a few things to look for:
The ability to quickly and easily generate scenarios, run them, and adopt the best plans for the current market conditions isn’t just a pie in the sky prediction for future technology. It’s something that can be achieved right now, and it has the power to have a huge impact on distributors and other businesses that grapple with complex last mile delivery problems. The trick is finding a logistics application that actually empowers you to work quickly, efficiently, and intelligently.