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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As more and more businesses are moving online, the need for efficient, smart, and reliable dispatch logistics software has become more intense. The rapid rise of eCommerce, cross-border trade, and numerous new business models, such as hyperlocal and same-day deliveries, are some of the key growth drivers of dispatch logistics.
Further, customer expectations in terms of communication, tracking, and real-time updates on the shipment status have also spurred growth in the computer-aided dispatch console market, which is expected to be USD 2.36 Bn By 2028.
Whether you are an owner/operator or someone who manages a large fleet, dispatching plays a crucial role in your business. It can directly affect your profitability, efficiency, and customer service.
For instance, poor dispatching can result in increased fuel costs, tired drivers, and dissatisfied customers switching to another service provider.
In contrast, organized and effective dispatch logistics software ensures timely deliveries, which means happy customers and increased revenue.
Here, we discuss dispatch logistics at length, explore the various challenges in its management, and share how investing in smart dispatch software can help businesses grow and amplify their earnings.
Dispatch Logistics is the process of transferring a product or item from one place to another place. Dispatching mainly consists of Planning, Managing, Tracking, and Controlling the entire operation of the logistics businesses, while some basic forms concern themselves only with offering logistics components to third parties, such as couriers, taxis, trucks, etc.
A dispatch logistics software coordinates the movement of goods and materials within its supply chain. A logistics plan involves coordinating with truck/vehicle drivers, shipping companies, and other third parties to ensure that shipments arrive correctly and on time to manage minimum delivery costs. It provides customer satisfaction, manages technicians in the field, and ensures day-to-day operations run smoothly.
The goal of Dispatch Logistics includes.
Dispatchers handle logistics and coordinate deliveries with customers, provide precise logistics on routes for drivers, and coordinate delivery times for everything to run smoothly. They provide drivers with all the information that they need to complete deliveries and also offer smart automation such as routing software, real-time tracking, dynamic routing, etc., for completing the deliveries faster and in an efficient manner.
Dispatch software systems are automated software platforms to help businesses automate the activities related to the management, monitoring, tracking, and controlling of the dispatch (assets and services), such as routing and scheduling processes and more. These software systems provide a simpler and extremely efficient way to coordinate routes, plan and schedule deliveries, track the assets on the road, orchestrate highly efficient deliveries and mitigate cost challenges.
Depending on the business use case and applications, the dispatch software can help businesses do multiple different things. Some examples include workflow automation, rider or driver management, shift or roster management, automated billing and invoicing, routing of the vehicles to job sites or delivery locations, reassigning them, and tracking their movements.
The software gives dispatchers a comprehensive view of the entire workforce. With that kind of visibility, dispatchers can make more informed decisions.
Some other advanced functionalities of dispatch logistics software include the following:
Statista found that global retail e-commerce will grow by 56 percent in the coming years, reaching 8.1 trillion dollars. Further, the cross-border eCommerce market is also in for lightning-fast growth, hitting the USD 5,576.73 bn mark by 2030.
The absence of an efficient dispatch system will result in manual tracking, routing, and scheduling drivers’ schedules taking too much time.
Dispatching tracking software, however, makes managing these processes easy. This software automates routing and schedules delivery, making it more efficient. Below, we discuss some of the most crucial benefits of implementing dispatch software.
Nowadays, customers expect their orders to arrive as soon as possible. However, consumers are unaware of the difficulties shippers face when delivering their goods to their homes, primarily in the last mile of the delivery process.
To provide same-day delivery, business owners must develop a dispatch management system. With the right dispatching tools and software, customer satisfaction and retention will increase, and complications will get reduced.
As a result of poor dispatch management, many of us think customers will be upset when they don’t receive their parcels on time. The problem of poor dispatch management doesn’t just affect customers. Fleet driver turnover is also impacted by it.
A clear fleet policy will attract more fleet drivers. A fleet driver will move on to a business that values their time and effort more than one that dispatches poorly.
However, an automated dispatch system reduces issues, helps drivers plan and optimize their routes, and gives them peace of mind that issues will get resolved on time. Everything, right from shift management to roster planning and billings to claims – is automated. Drivers can enjoy effortless cash reconciliation and enjoy effortless settlements without errors as and when required.
Transport costs have always been an essential factor for logistics businesses and are quite challenging to reduce with traditional practices.
Well-planned dispatch management will be the key to achieving business success in this case. Instead of hiring more drivers to meet daily orders, business owners can carefully plan dispatches to load more goods into their fleets. In addition, by reducing driver attrition rates, it is possible to free up more funds for rehiring and retraining new drivers.
Dispatch logistics management helps businesses energize highly cost-efficient deliveries by
Dispatch logistics management aims to improve the levels of customer service for businesses by ensuring zero slip-ups, highly transparent operations, and sustainable order movements.
To optimize delivery efforts, dispatchers must plan proper routes, schedule drivers, and notify recipients of expected delivery times. If these three requirements get properly implemented, delivery drivers can ship goods more quickly to customers. Via dynamic ETAs, customers can predict when their parcels will arrive and they can be there, ready to receive the parcels. The result will be fewer questions from customers worried about their packages’ arrival, fewer delays, fewer delivery re-attempts, and happy customers.
Manual dispatch delivery fails to provide the ability to track or receive real-time updates and has to rely on driver’s calls/texts, which is also inconvenient. Further, customers get impatient and anxious if they don’t have any tracking numbers or if the shipment gets delayed beyond the promised ETAs.
On the other hand, dispatch-delivery software helps businesses keep track of all their dispatch operations combined with the delivery fleet in one place.
Also, an automated dispatch system can generate daily dispatch plans that ensure everyone follows the same program and completes deliveries within the specified timeframe.
Manual management and monitoring of all the dispatch logistics processes and components is neither possible nor scalable. Further, owing to the lack of visibility into the asset movements, reasons for delivery failures or re-attempts, resource utilization, and SLA adherence capabilities, businesses tend to grapple with inefficiencies.
They are not able to allocate the orders keeping multiple constraints in mind, such as delivery timelines, worker availability, vehicle cost, delivery location, and operational cost.
Such partial understanding of operational capabilities affects the overall system efficiency and leads to poor delivery workflows.
Using automation, on the other hand, helps businesses plan and strategize, keeping multiple constraints in mind and leveraging smart in-built capabilities to create highly efficient delivery workflows.
The automated dispatch logistics management solutions also offer smart, automated alerts for end customers, drivers, managers, etc., for efficient management and operational transparency.
Every partner or service provider in the dispatch logistics ecosystem has different ways of recording information, such as shipment status. Now, owing to the lack of standardization across all these statuses, businesses find it hard to have a unified view and management capabilities over all these components.
This, in turn, limits the scalability as adding more service providers or partners means adding more unstructured information and even more complex management.
Automated dispatch logistics management, however, places all the burden on the software for updating, monitoring, and checking the status and for status standardization as well.
So, businesses can use the same process for a hundred or a thousand orders easily and scale as and when required.
Businesses such as courier companies handle multiple thousands of orders every day. In manual dispatch-delivery models, orders are not monitored in real-time, creating a lack of transparency. So if deliveries cannot get tracked on time, they may cause significant delays, putting the customer experience at risk.
On the other hand, users receive alerts from automated dispatch software about any issues like breakdowns, traffic jams, and weather conditions so that they can take immediate action for faster resolution. Additionally, the customer is notified in advance if there is a delay due to unforeseen events.
Likewise, businesses get real-time insights into leg-to-leg order movements, which helps them monitor the shipment status. The automated smart dispatch logistics system also serves predictive alerts for any crucial event like incidental costs that might affect the delivery ETAs or other key milestones.
Several steps are involved in the complex process of deliveries and shipment movements, such as segregating orders, allocating them, selecting vehicles, finding the correct delivery executive, etc. The process of manual dispatching typically involves multiple teams.
This not only increases the redundancies in the system but also increases the vulnerability to inefficiencies. Further, having more team members never necessarily means that the routes planned for deliveries are the most optimal ones. The involvement of the human element affects the overall operational costs and steers businesses toward losses as well.
Integration of intelligent dispatch-delivery software minimizes mistakes and speeds up the delivery process. With the new focus on critical functions for enterprise growth, team members can devote their time to more critical tasks.
The primary function of dispatching is to monitor the location and status of field agents and vehicles. Therefore, GPS tracking is essential in software. After that, it should support automating all manual tasks.
It is easier to access dispatch software with mobile apps, and dispatchers can directly communicate with drivers. With an automatic notification feature, a dispatcher will receive automatic notifications about all scheduled trips and receive frequent updates on the drivers’ status.
Additionally, this system will alert customers at every phase until final delivery, ensuring their satisfaction with the service.
Legacy dispatch management systems face post-dispatch issues that dispatch tracking solves. It allows all parties, including buyers, sellers, and delivery teams, to keep track of the live progress of their deliveries.
Smart digital functionalities like ePOD (electronic-proof-of-delivery) can improve efficiency and speed. It also reduces paperwork while maintaining the required trail of documents without the threat of lost or mishandled papers.
Dispatch tracking software keeps comprehensive records of goods’ movements until they reach their destination.
End-to-end order management starts with order placement by various customers through various channels at different times. Following the order placement, it is sent to the fulfillment center to process the order. When picking, products are retrieved from available inventory and delivered to packing stations according to a picking list.
Orders get packaged as soon as they arrive in the packaging area so that their dimensional weight gets minimized and provides sufficient protection. Packages get packed and shipped to customers. The final step is to deliver the items to the customer.
Dispatch software keeps records of the dispatching, movement, and delivery of assets. With the help of cloud-based servers and data centers, logistics teams maintain a real-time monitoring system and provide alerts to clients.
As a result, the software enhances visibility among customers, sellers, and logistics providers, to maintain efficient and effective delivery operations.
The multi-stop route planning process involves considering several factors to determine the optimal delivery route, such as including the driver and truck fleet availability, the address of delivery, shipment numbers and volume, fuel efficiency, traffic, driver skill, and special handling of packages.
With dispatch software, businesses can select the most efficient route for package delivery. In addition to improving on-time delivery capabilities, the software addresses real-time routing problems.
This software lets dispatch managers automate route planning, reducing operational costs and saving time. Additionally, it reduces delivery turnaround times and increases productivity and profitability.
A software-based dispatch logistics platform automates task assignments by incorporating dynamic routing. The delivery task assignment feature enables dispatchers to assign jobs automatically and keep track of delivery progress.
Also, the system simplifies the tasks of truck dispatchers by reducing errors during pickups. Additionally, this feature provides fleet drivers with support information that makes their jobs easier, such as:
Additionally, drivers can view detailed shipment information when expanding a specific stop. By expanding the details of a visit, drivers can find the following information:
Dispatch software systems are fully automated and are capable of routing dynamically and allocating tasks automatically. This includes GPS tracking and communication solutions that enable dispatchers or users to track a delivery route’s performance in real time.
Instead of using less reliable forecasts like averages for static routing, dynamic routing is determined by actual order volumes and delivery times, providing the following benefits:
Shipsy’s AI-powered dispatch logistics management platform keeps all the components of the dispatch logistics ecosystem, such as drivers, dispatchers, and customers, connected via a single unified dashboard. The robust and flexible capabilities of the solution provide real-time insights into the asset and order movements and also offer in-depth data and analytics to understand the business pain points across international and domestic borders.
Shipsy helps ensure enhanced customer satisfaction with push notifications and real-time updates about the status of deliveries. As a customizable SaaS-based platform, the intuitive software empowers enterprises to integrate logistics operations across multiple modes of transportation seamlessly.
With Shipsy as their logistics partner, businesses can:
Talk to our in-house experts today or schedule a custom demo today to get started with a smart trucking dispatch software personalized for your business needs.
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