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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More than six out of ten customers perceive delayed deliveries as the biggest reason for switching retailers. In case of late deliveries, they would not likely order again. Even more than product quality or price – late delivery affects customer retention significantly.
While businesses and retailers all over the globe are rapidly adopting robust solutions for delivery management, the need for smart optimization right from the first step is often overlooked.
This write-up explores one such crucial aspect of the delivery process – dispatch delivery. What is dispatch delivery, and what are some operational challenges associated with it? How can businesses and retailers from different industries overcome these challenges with automation, and how to choose the right automation for unique business needs?
We are going to explore the answers to all of these and many more questions related to dispatch delivery management and automation.
Dispatch Delivery is the stage right after the seller processes the order at the source of supply, for example, the warehouse. The dispatch phase includes the order being packed and assigned to the appropriate delivery fleets based on designated routes. Once an order is dispatched, the delivery part includes the rider delivering the order to the designated customer along with receiving the proof of delivery.
Another way to look at dispatch delivery is that the item has gone from the production stage to the ‘packing/labeling/invoicing’ phase, i.e., it is being handed over to the delivery agents, who will then deliver it to the buyer of the product.
Consider Elise, who has just ordered skincare products from an e-commerce website. A few hours after placing the order, she receives a notification that says, “Your order has been dispatched and is ready to be shipped.”
Elise is now confused. She thought dispatching and shipping meant the same thing. And where does ‘delivery’ factor in? As mentioned earlier, when a seller says the item has been dispatched, it is ready to leave the warehouse. The company has packed it and attached the various labels such as order number, name of customer, etc.
When the order status shows ‘dispatched,’ it means it has been processed and is waiting at the point of supply, all packed and ready to go. When the order status says ‘shipped,’ it means it has left the supplier’s warehouse.
But does it come directly to the customer? Not necessarily. Once the order leaves the warehouse, it goes to a 3PL provider, or an in-house delivery agent picks it up. If the brand that Elise’s skincare products belong to has entered into a contract with a third-party delivery company, they will process the package as per their internal workflows. If the brand has its own in-house delivery agents, then this is the stage where they prepare for delivery.
The traditional pen and paper approach for dispatching and then delivering it to the designated customer is cumbersome and time-intensive. In a fast-paced world where consumers prefer super-fast deliveries, being manually dependent on the logistics and transportation process can severely impact the business’s bottom line.
The need of the hour is to automate the dispatch-delivery process to enhance business efficiency. Businesses that still rely on product and pricing as brand differentiators witness higher consumer churn in the age of super-fast deliveries. Reducing errors and minimizing delays go a long way in providing a great customer experience. Companies are increasingly investing in state-of-the-art automated dispatch-delivery technologies to improve the delivery operations and stay ahead of buyer expectations.
In the next section, we will find out how.
Automated dispatch delivery leverages the smart built-in functionalities to optimize all the processes and tasks associated with dispatch delivery. For example, managers no longer have to manually allocate consignment, “the seller can print the labels specific to the 3PL service providers’ regulations, and the documentation is digitized.”
The intelligent platform uses ML to process and make sense of multiple data sets in minutes to provide business users with the best-optimized routes. Driver and vehicle allocation also becomes a hassle-free procedure as the solution automatically coordinates the movement of goods and people. The KPI-tracking feature provides detailed insights into multiple aspects of delivery operations, including driver hours, performance, planned stops, actual stops, fuel efficiency, etc. Enterprises can analyze these critical insights to identify loopholes and continuously improve their performance.
Dispatch delivery software ensures seamless delivery orchestration via automation and provides a real-time view of the delivery fleet for enhanced transparency. Smart dispatch delivery management platforms help businesses reduce human error, automate manual work and focus on business-related aspects better. Thus, enterprises can unlock growth and scale in a cost-efficient manner.
Before the advent of shipping technologies, manual dispatch processes were in place. This involved filling shipping receipts, tracking spreadsheets, and creating a paper trail for each order. Cumbersome and slow, manual dispatch delivery became a significant roadblock for companies to deliver quality consumer experience in the current times.
With the boom of e-commerce, customers expect deliveries that are:
To keep pace with evolving customer demands, businesses are investing in automated dispatch software to coordinate the movement of goods, people, and services. Modern dispatch solutions that stem from innovative machine learning models have reduced delivery timelines while making the overall system more efficient through real-time analytics.
The demand for online delivery has skyrocketed in the last few years, and the pandemic has further propelled the need for businesses to keep pace with rising orders. Arranging and assigning tasks to each driver based on location, distance, and vehicle beforehand is imperative for uninterrupted business continuity. Automated dispatch delivery solutions have enabled managers to strategically plan orders and significantly maximize operational efficiency.
Moreover, the real-time route optimization feature allows the managers to plan, monitor, manage and track the order movement in real-time from a single dashboard. The managers can set the optimization constraints for a wide range of consignment, vehicle, and rider characteristics, such as the nature of goods being transported, their volume and weight, or shortest routes.
They can ensure that the rider follows the system-generated route and also convey the real-time ETAs to their customers. Businesses can optimize the delivery process with trimmed budgets and minimal human intervention. With the right automation, brands can optimize the dispatch-delivery process, stay ahead of consumer expectations and increase customer retention.
Below, we discuss how a smart dispatch delivery platform helps overcome various challenges via automation.
Manual dispatching is a thing of the past. In a world connected by digital channels where online delivery is completed within ten minutes, traditional dispatch-delivery approaches negatively impact the business bottom line. A robust automated dispatch delivery addresses some of the biggest obstacles that manual dispatch delivery frameworks face:
In manual dispatch delivery, there is no mechanism to track or receive real-time updates (unless you make calls/ask your delivery drivers to send text messages; both are impractical). A dispatch-delivery software keeps track of your dispatch operations and delivery fleet through a single window. The automated system can use this information to create daily dispatch plans so that everyone involved follows one central program and completes deliveries within the stipulated time frame.
A company collects enormous amounts of data on a daily basis. Factors such as fuel usage and time spent on each delivery might go unchecked. An automated dispatch delivery system monitors these aspects and safeguards customers from fuel price hikes. By continuously syncing and analyzing data, the algorithms keep learning from every subsequent delivery to provide the most optimal solutions for future purposes.
In manual dispatch systems, every individual will have their own procedure, and marrying these methods with each other can be a daunting task. This makes expansion difficult. The shipping and product packaging teams work closely with the dispatch delivery team. Updates are exchanged over hundred times daily, often leading to a chaotic atmosphere. With automated dispatch delivery, all the updates, monitoring, and status checks become the software’s burden. Your team can follow the same process for a hundred orders or even a thousand.
A courier company handles hundreds, sometimes even thousands of orders every day. Manual dispatch-delivery models do not provide real-time status for each order, resulting in a lack of transparency. Not being able to track deliveries on time may result in significant delays, derailing the customer experience. Automated dispatch software alerts users of any inconveniences (breakdowns, traffic jams, weather conditions), allowing them to take instant actions for faster resolutions. Moreover, in case of unforeseen events, the customer is also notified regarding a delay in advance.
Courier management is not just about dispatching the order and delivering it on time. The complex procedure involves various tenets such as order segregation, allocation, selecting the vehicle, finding the right delivery executive, etc. As a result, multiple teams are involved in the process when businesses follow manual dispatching. By integrating an intelligent dispatch-delivery software, the menial tasks are automated for a faster and error-free experience. Team members can now focus on more critical functions for enterprise growth.
A courier service provider works with multiple e-commerce companies. Each e-commerce company will have an endless list of orders that the courier provider needs to fulfill within the delivery timeframes. A customer may want to make last-minute changes to the delivery date or address. Missing out on any customer request or not integrating the request with the right customer negatively impacts the buyer experience. A flexible automated dispatch platform keeps a record of customer data and seamlessly accommodates any last-minute changes to adjust the delivery operations.
Other benefits of automated dispatch delivery include centralized operations, i.e., all the relevant parties will have access to the same status updates, thus reducing coordination effort. Advanced dispatching systems also allow for customized dispatching processes. You can set milestones for dispatch delivery tasks for a particular client. Since the requirements vary business-wise, an automated dispatch delivery system will come in handy to incorporate these differences.
Courier service providers handle clients across multiple sectors. The business use-cases for dispatch delivery vary industry-wise such as retail, manufacturing, quick commerce, etc. We explore some of the use cases from various industries in the following section:
Hyper-fast deliveries are the new norm, and companies are continuously on the outlook to upscale their operations with greater efficiency. Quick commerce industry players deal with thousands of clients on a daily basis. Dependency on manual processes to serve the ever-expanding customer base can make it difficult to manage massive order volumes and pose scalability issues. Some of the challenges that arise while implementing manual dispatching methods include:
State-of-the-art delivery management platforms intelligently assign deliveries to ensure equal distribution of tasks among all drivers. Shipsy’s intelligent solution provides a 360-degree view of the entire delivery process, from calculating COD remittance to accessing the list of pending and the number of hours clocked in. Customers are also notified regarding every step of the journey with a tracking link shared by SMS, delivery app, etc. With automated dispatching, QSRs can seamlessly automate core delivery processes and ensure super-fast hyperlocal deliveries across cities.
Retailers sell a wide range of products and serve a large client base. Scaling the delivery operations effortlessly and meeting the ever-growing consumer demands is indeed a challenging task. However, many retailers, while partnering with 3PL logistics providers, face multiple roadblocks:
A reliable dispatch-delivery system unifies the 3PL statuses and automates the mapping of delivery tasks. Low-code smart logistics platforms enable retailers to reduce development cycles and automate mapping to improve logistics planning accuracy. In the age of express delivery, quick order allocation to drivers is of prime importance. Shipsy’s intuitive platform enables retail providers to divide big metropolitan areas into smaller polygraphs. The client’s location is identified on the polygraph, and the order is allocated to the rider associated with the area, resulting in effective fleet management.
The movement of goods across cross-border settings requires greater visibility, optimization, and transparency. AI-enabled smart automation dispatch systems are being increasingly adopted by industries to effectively track, trace, monitor, and plan the seamless movement of goods along the supply chain. However, the increase in parcel delivery volumes due to rising demands needs to be complemented with robust automation tools.
Manual dispatching approaches result in problems such as increased operational expenditure, container scarcity, and unavailable parking spaces at ports. Automated dispatch-delivery platforms leverage AI and advanced data analytics to improve transparency, increase throughput, and overcome friction. Businesses can now enhance their decision-making process and communicate with multiple parties via a single platform hassle-free to improve stakeholder collaboration.
CEP and efficient last-mile delivery need to go hand-in-hand. Increased manual intervention for delivery execution is cumbersome and prone to errors. There is also a lack of visibility for customers into the package handling process in the traditional approach. A robust logistics software streamlines the operations under one purview to make last-mile transparent and a more effective logistics management.
In the age of rapid digitization, lack of automation results in inefficient management of the growing distributor ecosystem. Smart, scalable, mobile-friendly, and platform-independent solutions are the need of the hour to auto-scale the delivery operations, enable secure transactions, enhance customer communication, and accelerate last-mile transaction volume growth.
Now that we have explored various use cases for dispatch-delivery systems across industries, it is time to look at some of the must-have characteristics of the software. Choosing the right dispatch-delivery solutions can be daunting, and businesses need to identify a product fit that best suits their enterprise goals.
Listed below are some of the essential features of a dispatch-delivery management system:
A dispatch delivery software uses machine learning and analytics to collect and analyze data related to routes, drivers, customer feedback, pending and completed orders, and much more. Businesses can identify hidden trends and loopholes via actionable insights and develop strategies to accelerate enterprise growth.
With Shipsy, you attain a 360-degree view of your orders and real-time alerts will help you identify gaps and opportunities for optimization. Shipsy provides all of these and more.
Shipsy’s custom SaaS-based solution provides the most efficient routes and finds glitches in the delivery process, and manages them efficiently. Now enhance the customer experience with real-time tracking, greater visibility, dynamic SLAs, etc. Shipsy helps you to accelerate your logistics operations and stay ahead of consumer expectations along with a host of advantages:
To know how you can increase your logistical efficiency via automation, sign up for a demo now.
Automated dispatch software digitizes vehicle dispatch process and makes it easy for the fleet managers to monitor movement of all goods and track vehicles under one roof.
It is undeniably true that a traditional delivery management system cannot cope with the increasing delivery-related demands and changing expectations of today’s customers. ...
