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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Before we delve into the key features of last mile delivery solutions let’s establish the critical role it plays in modern delivery operations. A lot depends on how businesses executive last mile processes. It directly impacts customer experience, delivery profitability, rider performance, environmental sustainability, brand reputation and much more. No wonder it’s the most expensive part of logistics execution. In fact, 53% of the total shipping and 41% of the entire supply chain costs can be attributed to last-mile operations.
Last mile is the final leg of logistics management that includes picking up products from the nearest distribution center or hub and delivering it to customers’ doorsteps. This leg of logistics directly connects with the customer and hence, impacts the customer experience. Any loophole or inconsistency in the last mile can impact the customer experience, business reputation, and business profitability.
Achieving this goal is not possible by following traditional last mile delivery management practices. Therefore, most businesses are implementing advanced last mile delivery solutions that are backed by technologies like artificial intelligence, IoT, and machine learning. Such solutions make the last mile journey effortless and efficient by automating processes that require manual intervention. The only thing a business needs to pay attention to is choosing the right last mile delivery software that fulfills its particular requirements.
Advanced last mile delivery solutions help eCommerce brands, retailers, D2C businesses, on demand and hyperlocal delivery providers to meet evolving customer demands, efficiently manage delivery operations, and increase delivery profitability by significantly optimizing operating costs. Wondering how? The last mile delivery software or solution streamlines the delivery process to minimize manual intervention and bring operational transparency and visibility. It also contributes to eliminating manual errors, enhancing customer experience, and measuring key metrics such as order accuracy, fuel consumption rate, cost per mile, etc.
Now that you know how a last mile delivery solution can benefit your business, how about getting the one for your business. To find the best last mile software, all you have to do is to look for the features mentioned in this blog.
If you are planning to automate your last mile delivery processes, then you must have an idea of the key features of last mile delivery solutions. These features will help you choose the best for your business. Check them out below:
The dispatch process involves assigning a job to the most suitable driver based on their experience, skills, and other factors. This requires manual intervention and a significant amount of time. Auto dispatching accomplishes this process with no or minimal intervention while ensuring reduced labor costs and service time. Therefore, auto-dispatching should be one of the key features of the last mile delivery solution.
Real-time tracking is one of the most important features of last mile delivery solutions. On one hand, it makes the delivery journey transparent for the customers and on the other hand, it allows businesses to have real-time visibility of drivers’ location. With this feature, customers and businesses both get real-time status updates of all the packages that are on the way for delivery.
Last mile solutions send customers a tracking link via SMS/WhatsApp/Email. Besides, they also receive updates like “Your Order Has Been Dispatched” or “Your Order Is Out For Delivery” along with driver’s contact information. Customers having driver details can communicate with the driver in case of rescheduling. This saves the driver’s time and effort both. Make sure the last mile software you choose has this feature.
Data-backed decisions help a business to improve their delivery processes and achieve customer satisfaction. A last mile delivery solution with automatic data management and analytics feature can help look into on-time delivery rates, successful/failed/missed deliveries, customer feedback, resource utilization, and driver’s performance. Make sure the solution you purchase for your business includes this feature.
Route planning and optimization impact largely on the overall last mile costs. Inefficiently optimized routes lead to increased fuel costs, vehicle idling time, delayed deliveries, low driver productivity, and high demand for hiring more delivery vehicles. It can also contribute to increased CO2 emissions.
To avoid all these issues, it is necessary to optimize delivery routes by considering factors such as delivery time window, delivery location, route history, real-time traffic and weather conditions, and type of vehicle. A last mile delivery solution overcomes all these challenges and designs an optimized delivery route from source to destination and then back to the source. Moreover, it also includes multi-stop route planning and dynamic route planning to improve delivery productivity. Make sure this feature is a part of the last mile software.
A dedicated dashboard for managing hub operations, dispatch, label printing, etc., should also be a part of the last mile delivery software. Such a dashboard can help businesses manage multiple hub operations, measure KPIs, and monitor other operations effortlessly.
Feedbacks are important to know if your customers are satisfied with your delivery process. Therefore, the last mile solution should also include it as its key feature. With the feedback option, they would be able to share their delivery experience or raise a complaint against the delivery.
Rider management includes managing rider payout, looking into their real-time performance score and monitoring rider activities. It also incorporates rider gamification that helps to increase drivers’ productivity by scoring logic and managing leaderboards.
When COD orders are delivered, the money collected by the rider is deposited to the destination hub. The feature helps drivers reconcile payment using the driver application.
It means utilizing each delivery vehicle’s capacity completely to maximize the number of deliveries per vehicle and minimize the overall delivery costs. A last mile solution can make this possible by considering weight and size of the parcels, capacity of the vehicle, type of product, and other factors.
A fake delivery attempt is when a customer is available at the delivery address but receives a message that the “delivery couldn’t be done due to unavailability of the customer.” A last mile delivery solution comes up with NDR (Non-delivery report) management to identify and minimize fake delivery attempts, making it an essential feature of the software.
As soon as the delivery personnel updates the non-delivery reason, it reflects on the software’s dashboard. Also, the customer receives an automated call and message to collect their feedback and response. The customer can raise a concern about the fake delivery attempt and the logistics managers can immediately take action.
Depending on the nature of goods and delivery location, a last mile delivery solution chooses the delivery mode. For example, if an order has to be delivered within two kilometers from the distribution center, then the software will automatically assign the delivery to a rider with a bicycle. Similarly, it also prioritizes choosing electric vehicles to minimize fuel consumption and reduce CO2 emissions.
NDR standardization helps to know NDRs that are most often recorded in a specific city/geography, recorded by a specific third-party logistics provider, and cited at a particular origin hub. The software consolidates a list of 60+ non-delivery reports into six categories.
Once the order is placed, the system creates a delivery route. If the subsequent orders are also in the same radius or towards the same delivery location, the last mile solution automatically clubs them with the previous order. Look for intelligent order clubbing in the last mile delivery solution you are considering for your business.
Providing accurate ETA (estimated time of arrival) is one of the influential factors in delighting customers. A last mile software with dynamic ETA feature offers the same. The customer can get a granular level update on the status of their order.
With an automated returns feature, a last mile delivery software creates return requests on the platform in real-time. It means as soon as the system receives a return request, the software auto-assigns the pickup. The last mile solution ensures processing the request using the most efficient route, which enables faster returns.
The advanced geocoding feature helps to locate delivery addresses effortlessly. It converts addresses into longitude and latitude making ambiguous addresses easy to locate.
Analytics and dashboard facilitate tracking data around orders, riders, and SLAs. The feature can help getting answers to the number of delivered/delayed/canceled orders along with average delivery time, and more.
Collecting electronic proof of delivery is also an important feature of the last mile software. Using the features, drivers can get e-signatures or capture photos as proof of delivery. It can make businesses deal with dubious customers and manage complaints like missed deliveries/failed deliveries against an order that has been delivered.
Keeping an eye on the upcoming delivery trends help you plan better last mile strategies. As the trend changes, you can decide which features to add to your last mile delivery solution to cope with the new changes. Let’s check out upcoming last mile trends:
Once integrated, last mile delivery software can do wonders in terms of reducing costs, improving delivery speed and efficiency, and achieving customer satisfaction. Highlighting below the key benefits of last mile software:
Now that you are planning to implement a last mile delivery solution, let’s check out some effective tips that can help you pick the best one for your business.
Shipsy, a trusted SaaS-based last mile delivery solution provider includes all the top-notch features in its last mile software. Moreover, it also offers a demo along with round-the-clock support for the final mile solution. Shipsy’s last mile delivery software is scalable, which means you can add new features or functionalities anytime you want. It has empowered businesses to achieve:
So, what are you waiting for? Get it today to streamline the last leg of your logistics.
Last mile delivery costs account for 53% of the total shipping costs and every wrong package delivered is a direct loss of 17$. Read how tracking & improving these Last Mile KPIs can help.
Last-mile delivery involves the transportation of goods from the last distribution hub to the final destination within the shortest time and at the minimum possible cost.
