Plan, procure, execute, & track transportation for every shipment across your supply chain & logistics operations
A SaaS solution to help grow your business by achieving 100% perfect order execution at high volumes
Increase vehicle capacity utilization and customer promise adherence
Grow your business with omnichannel presence and automated pickups
Consolidate shipments for hub to hub movement across land and air
Real-time customer communications and collect accurate PODs
Orchestrate logistics operations with multiple 3rd party carriers
Achieve cost effective, scalable, sustainable, and customer centric deliveries
Orchestrate all your cross-border logistics operations with ease
Improve address accuracy, ensure first-attempt delivery success, reduce costs and boost customer experience
Gain end-to-end shipment visibility, get proactive alerts, and send customers live tracking links
Grow business in a dynamic world and manage operations across First, Middle & Last mile
Delight customers by seamlessly managing store and online orders across own fleet and 3rd party
Reduce freight costs & get end to end visibility across shipments
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The eCommerce market globally is growing at an unprecedented rate, primarily driven by the rising internet penetration. So much so that the global eCommerce market is expected to touch $58.74 Trillion by 2028 between 2022-2028 at a CAGR of 26.55%.
While the growing eCommerce means more business for retailers, it also brings several challenges because of changing customer preferences. For instance, customers now prefer same-day delivery, free shipping, and returns and want complete visibility over their orders, which is impossible with manual delivery planning. This calls for modern delivery planning software solutions or delivery planning software that help manage deliveries in an end-to-end manner.
With smart delivery planning software, businesses can plan and find optimized routes, get complete visibility over shipments, and intelligently allocate vehicles and drivers. They can seamlessly handle returns and orchestrate intelligent and efficient deliveries while ensuring maximum vehicle utilization, operational efficiency, and reduction in costs. All this helps in completing timely deliveries and ensuring a better customer experience.
In this blog, we discuss delivery planning software in detail and also share why it is important for businesses. We also shed light on the common challenges businesses using manual delivery planning face, and how delivery planning software can help businesses, regardless of their industry, deal with those challenges. And finally, there are some key features every business looking for a delivery planning solution must look for to make the best choice.
Delivery planning is the process of planning deliveries to ensure that the orders reach the customers in an efficient and timely manner. It’s basically an organized way of managing all aspects of delivery, including route planning, order planning, vehicle planning, driver planning, etc.
As the eCommerce market grows, the demand for 10-minute deliveries and same-day deliveries is also increasing.
For instance, 56% of online customers of age 18-34 expect to have same-day delivery, according to a survey. The same survey states that 61% of consumers are willing to pay more for same-day delivery. And businesses need to meet these requirements to survive the competition. But how? With the help of smart delivery planning software.
Smart delivery planning software can help businesses plan out an optimized route while considering factors such as customer delivery window, congestion, etc., allocate the adequate vehicle and driver, manage returns, proof of deliveries, NDRs, real-time tracking, and monitoring, and orchestrate different processes.
This way, businesses can manage any workload and meet customer expectations without fail.
Effectively planning deliveries could bring several benefits. For instance, businesses can find the most optimized route from the source to the destination, enabling drivers to reach customers on time. They can do all this without having to drive any extra miles or spend any extra fuel cutting down transportation costs.
Also, businesses can also use unique constraints such as customer delivery window, ensuring the customer is always there when the shipment arrives. This will help improve customer satisfaction while saving the delivery re-attempt costs.
In addition, with delivery planning software, businesses can choose the right vehicle for different types of shipments and drivers based on their availability and experience. This way, all the assets are utilized effectively, which increases efficiency.
Most importantly, hyper-local and on-demand delivery businesses that sometimes have to process hundreds and even thousands of orders a day require a lot of planning to meet such high demands, which is impossible without a smart delivery planning solution.
Manual delivery planning is quite a complex process that leads to the mismanagement of resources. For instance, with manual planning, businesses invest in and manage a larger fleet than required, which adds to the costs.
Also, because of poor route optimization, the drivers end up driving extra miles, which translates to more fuel spent, adding to the logistics costs. In addition, as most tasks rely heavily on humans, businesses have to spend a lot on labor which adds to the operational costs.
With manual delivery planning, businesses fail to consider important constraints such as shipment type, vehicle capacity, shipment volume, driver experience, and driver availability while allocating drivers and vehicles. This leads to vehicles operating at a lower or higher capacity than they’re rated for, multiple drivers traveling the same route, and, eventually, poor asset utilization, which adds to the overall cost.
Manual delivery planning offers absolutely no visibility to businesses over the operations. Because of this, businesses fail to notice if different processes are functioning as expected. Also, businesses are unable to find any gaps in their processes due to a lack of visibility that further prohibits them from improving and improving.
Manual delivery planning is a highly inefficient process that significantly increases operational costs. For instance, because there’s no real-time tracking and visibility, drivers drive extra miles and burn extra fuel whenever there’s a roadblock or traffic congestion. Also, as several processes rely on manual labor, businesses have to maintain numerous employees, which again adds to the operational costs.
Another challenge that comes with manual delivery planning is the lack of real-time tracking. Because of this, businesses are unable to track the movement of their shipments and determine if they’re moving as expected. And if the shipment deviates from its path, the drivers manually reroute and drive more miles which further causes a delay in high costs, shipment delivery, and poor customer experience.
Because different factors such as traffic congestion, roadblocks, and other contingencies cannot be considered while planning a route manually, it often leads to delays in shipments and, thus, ETA SLA breaches. And SLA breaches are never good as they directly impact the customer experience.
Also, as manual route planning lacks automated alerts and visibility, customers do not get an updated ETA, which negatively impacts the customer experience.
Digital proof of delivery is essential when dealing with dubious customers who complain that the shipment was not delivered even after receiving their order. However, preventing such incidents is not possible with manual delivery planning. And because of this, businesses are always at risk of being defrauded by customers.
When the delivery or the route is not optimized, drivers often drive more miles, which adds to the transportation costs and causes a delay in shipment delivery, leading to a poor customer experience. In addition, customers are unable to track their shipments, which, again, amounts to a bad customer experience.
Often businesses have to reach out to multiple delivery partners when the demand rises. However, as manual delivery planning lacks visibility, as stated earlier, it becomes hard for businesses to manage multiple delivery partners at the same time. Also, businesses are unable to determine which partner is working as expected and which one’s adding to their troubles.
Yet another challenge that businesses face with manual delivery planning is redundant processes. Manual delivery planning involves numerous redundant processes which could have been automated using smart delivery planning software. For instance, if there’s a roadblock or any other contingency, the driver will have to coordinate with their supervisors before they move further, leading to unnecessary delays.
Delivery planning software is a smart solution that helps businesses efficiently plan their deliveries using AI and automation. With a delivery planning solution at their disposal, businesses can tackle all the challenges as opposed to manual planning.
For instance, it helps businesses find the most optimized route for their shipments while considering different factors to ensure timely deliveries and, thus, achieve higher operational efficiencies. And as the route is optimized, the overall miles driven are less, which helps reduce transportation costs.
Also, delivery planning solution allows businesses to have complete control over their operations, enabling them to monitor all the activities, ensuring everything goes as expected and there are no delays whatsoever.
Getting a digital proof of delivery also becomes easy with delivery planning software, saving businesses from dubious customers. And as such software help automate operations, businesses can get rid of redundant processes and achieve efficiency.
What’s more, reliable delivery route planning software offers a unified view of all the delivery partners and processes making it easier for businesses to manage everything right from a single unified dashboard.
Retail businesses often have to rely on multiple 3rd party logistics service providers to for meeting customer demands. However, without a centralized system, it can be hard to keep an eye on all the 3Pl operations and ensure timely deliveries.
However, with smart software, retail businesses can access a unified platform to keep an eye on all the operations and comprehensively plan all the processes comprehensively.
For hyper-local and quick commerce business operators, efficiency is everything. After all, they have to deliver thousands of orders, and that too under a specified deadline.
Reliable software solutions for delivery planning can help hyper-local and quick commerce businesses automate different processes such as documentation, invoicing, planning routes, etc., and achieve operational efficiency, enabling them to meet short delivery deadlines.
Reliable delivery planning software helps freight forwarders deliver a better customer experience by offering real-time tracking, monitoring, and management. Businesses can always keep an eye on all the operations involved in delivering a shipment.
This way, the chances of making a mistake reduce significantly. And even if something goes wrong, businesses can take appropriate action because of real-time updates and alerts.
Using reliable delivery planning solutions, logistics businesses can find an optimized route from source to destination while considering different constraints such as traffic congestion, fewer U-turns, etc.
Also, this software helps smartly allocate drivers and vehicles considering driver availability, familiarity, vehicle capacity, and shipment type, ensuring optimum asset utilization and optimization.
Along with expecting faster deliveries and free shipping, consumers also want to track their orders. 83% of the total U.S. shoppers surveyed stated that they expect regular updates regarding their shipments. And businesses can achieve that using reliable software for delivery planning. Such solutions send real-time alerts to the customers, updating them on their product’s location and improving the overall customer experience.
Smart software for delivery planning allows businesses to capture proof of delivery. This way, delivery partners can ensure that the order was delivered, saving businesses from dubious customers.
Delivery planning solutions offer complete visibility to all stakeholders, making it easy for them to communicate, collaborate, and manage all the operations seamlessly.
Smart delivery planning software solutions also use real-time insights to offer dynamic optimizations such as dynamic order clubbing, multi-stop routing, rerouting, and returns, ensuring a seamless flow of operations.
Different businesses have different use cases for delivery planning solutions. For instance, some use it for plotting the best route between source and destination, while others use it for automating everything from the vehicle, planning order planning, managing returns, etc.
Therefore, businesses must lay down their requirements and then look for a software solution that comes with all the features necessary to fulfill those requirements. However, here are some crucial features every business should look for while choosing a software for delivery planning
Delivery planning software must offer complete visibility to businesses to help them ensure the smooth movement of orders. Better visibility also allows better communication which is essential for smooth operations.
Real-time alerts are essential as they inform the stakeholders of the status of the shipments, allowing them to effectively manage unprecedented events.
It should come with a unified interface that allows businesses to seamlessly manage, monitor, and track all the operations from a single dashboard.
Businesses must be able to gather and use historical data to make better predictions with respect to contingencies and find gaps in the system and thus improve.
Reliable delivery planning solutions should allow stakeholders to communicate effectively and collaborate, ensuring everyone is on the same page.
Another must-have is proof of a delivery system that captures an image ensuring the delivery was completed to prevent fraud.
Delivery planning software must offer real-time tracking to customers so they can be aware of the whereabouts of their orders, ensuring a better customer experience.
One thing that businesses always keep in mind while choosing delivery planning platforms is to ensure it’s an end-to-end solution. An end-to-end solution offers all the functionalities any logistics business, retailer, freight forwarder, or quick commerce operator might need. This way, businesses can use additional features whenever required without having to purchase individual solutions.
Shipsy is an end-to-end delivery planning platform that makes last-mile deliveries easier to manage. Businesses can integrate Shipsy’s delivery planning software with existing ERPs, perform location-based driver allocation, achieve complete visibility of operations and send real-time tracking details to customers, ensuring a better customer experience.
With Shipsy’s AI-powered delivery management and orchestration, businesses can achieve the following:
For more information on how Shipsy can help, book a demo now!
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