How Many Rudolphs Do You Need? Smart 3PL Guide for Holiday Season 22

The North Pole Weekly’s last issue reported serious trouble in Christmas gift delivery this year. As the number of do-gooders and lively shoppers increased, the elves have been working extra-long hours to make holiday goodies for everyone around the globe. Even the little elf Hermey is pulling long shifts to make shiny new goodies with his little hands! However, the dear old Santa was struggling to complete all the deliveries on time with his current reindeer team. Also, having one red-nosed Rudolph limited the areas Santa could cover every day, which meant a number of kids and loved ones might be left wondering about the whereabouts of their Christmas goodies. 

Hence, as Santa looked for more recruits to ramp up the gift distribution and spread smiles everywhere, he stumbled on this awesome 4-step guide to scale gift deliveries this Holiday season. The word is that he is already done with the massive task and is now chilling in his old cozy cabin, drinking eggnogs and hot chocolates with his team of elves!

So, what did this 4-step guide include, and how can retailers take lessons from that?

We got the digs from Santa himself, and here they are for everyone’s eye!

4-Step Guide for Seamless, Scalable, and Smart Deliveries This Holiday Season

#1 Smart Planning to Make Things Oh So Bright

Leverage the power of AI/ML-powered logistics management and delivery orchestration to automate delivery task allocation among the self-owned fleets, 3PLs, and freelance riders. Determine which one of them works the best as per different constraints, such as delivery SLAs, delivery type, volume, vehicle make, delivery proximity, rider availability, and more. Such granular planning takes away the heavy fog of guesswork, and every rider can become a Rudolph with a delivery path available in full clarity. Complementing them with the most optimal routes and delivery clusters will further improve the delivery process via smart order clubbing, dynamic routing, multi-stop deliveries, and more. 

#2 Intelligent Last Mile Orchestration Guides the Sleighs Tonight

Among the chaos of high delivery rush, multiple elves’ stores, millions of packages, and multiple teams, it is highly likely for a rider to turn rogue and mark fake delivery attempts. Further, the incidents such as parcel damage, incorrect address, wrong address, and inefficient delivery routing can not only cost retailers their customers but also lead to operational losses.

Hence, Santa used AI-based routines and algorithms to tackle last mile issues, such as fake delivery attempts, delivery re-attempts, and frauds via automated workflow management, smart delivery routing, real-time re-routing, and automated delivery validation and authentication. So, while people around the globe were getting lovely gifts, they were also getting sweet and personalized notifications for arrival, links for tracking, and alerts for verifications.

#3 Multiple 3PL Partners to Send Glee to Every Customer

Partnering with multiple 3PL carriers and logistics service providers can not only help seize the opportunities to spread delight far and wide, but it can also help businesses move beyond the standard 3-4 days deliveries. They can leverage different service providers efficiently to deliver more per day, and diversify their revenue streams without compromising their bottom lines. Having multiple logistics partners help gain the upper hand in negotiations, leverage the individual carrier strengths to unlock improved serviceability, and cost-efficient management of elastic demands. 

#4 End-to-End Automation for Oh What Fun Deliveries

Santa knew that old maps and pathways were no longer relevant for scaling the Christmas deliveries. Hence, he switched to implementing end-to-end automation that helped gain granular insights into the leg-to-leg order movements and optimized the hidden loopholes for highly intelligent and efficient deliveries. He could set multiple constraints for shipping, routing, delivery allocation, and rider automation for scaling the deliveries and completing them well before Christmas.

Smart features such as geo-fencing the riders to the order pickup points helped reduce the time required for pickups, and on-the-go dynamic clubbing helped complete more orders per day.

Now that you have the playbook for scaling deliveries seamlessly and smartly, which is tried-tested-approved by none other than Santa, why not start using it to ramp up your delivery sleighs and sing JINGLE ALL THE WAY!!