Last-mile delivery optimization is incredibly helpful for companies in the food and beverages industry. You need to be flexible in order to handle spikes in traffic, and that’s not easy to do if you don’t use advanced technology like route planning programs.
Such technology simplifies your day-to-day delivery operations, which allows you to reduce your expenses, increase your profit margin, and make sure your customers are happy. Overall, it helps you build a thriving food and beverages business.
How does it do that, exactly? Well, let’s take a look:
Plan Efficient Routes
Without efficient routes, your drivers won’t know the best way to get to customers, which means that deliveries are going to be late now and then. Late deliveries lead to angry customers, and angry customers lead to you suddenly not having a business anymore.
So the value of being able to plan the best possible routes is clear, right?
There are a lot of factors that go into route planning. You’ve got to consider traffic, construction, weather, and more. Trying to sort out all these factors yourself is a real headache – it can take hours.
But a route planning program can do all this hard work for you in an instant. Route4Me produces accurate, 100% optimized routes in less than a minute, no matter how many stops you have.
Want To See For Yourself How Route4Me Can Boost Your Profits?
Read the following article to learn more about the benefits of route optimization technology:
8 Ways You Can Benefit from a Vehicle Route Planning Software
Monitor Driver Activity
Being on time is especially important in the food and beverages industry. If you’re delivering consumer electronics, it doesn’t really matter if it takes a few hours to get to a customer’s doorstep. If you’re delivering a hot meal, not so much.
Our routes will get you there on time. Also, Route4Me helps you handle emergencies like a vehicle breaking down in traffic. That’s because Route4Me comes with a GPS tracking feature.
How does GPS tracking work?
GPS tracking helps you visualize your drivers’ activities on a map in real-time so that you can immediately know if a field rep or driver makes an unauthorized stop or takes longer than planned at a specific destination.
With GPS tracking, you’ll also have the ability to see which driver is closest to a broken-down delivery vehicle, which gives you a chance to reroute the closest driver to the broken-down vehicle and maybe still make the original delivery on time.
You can even set up geofence-powered automated alerts in Route4Me to get instant notifications when vehicles enter or exit pre-determined locations. This will help you ensure products are picked up and dropped off on time.
Read the following article to learn more about what GPS tracking can do for you:
Why Your Competitors Have No Lazy Employees (and How GPS Tracking Helps Them)
Control Overhead Expenses
Drivers have a lot of freedom – they spend most of their work time on their own, outside of your supervision. It’s easy for them to run personal errands or just hang out and waste time while getting paid for it.
But with GPS tracking, you can see what your drivers do and confirm that they were actually working when they said they were working. You’ll be able to see if they were really grabbing a bite to eat or visiting a friend’s house when they said they were working as well.
Route4Me keeps your drivers honest, which has the effect of making your business much more productive. Also, it’ll save you from paying for overtime hours that were never really necessary.
Manage Fuel Expenses
Fuel is a much bigger expense for food and beverage companies than drivers overcharging their hours, though.
Thankfully, Route4Me can help you out in this area, too.
It does so with its reporting and analytics feature, which helps you view your fuel expenses and identify the wasteful behaviors of drivers who burn more fuel than they should. You’ll be able to see fuel slippage, theft, and instances of drivers billing fuel expenses more than the amount their vehicles’ tanks can even hold.
When you know about these things, you’ll know that you what you need to do to cut down your fuel expenses. Without that knowledge, you’re just letting money slip out the door.
Ensure Driver Safety
Driver safety should always be a top priority, not only because looking out for the health of those who work for you is simply the right thing to do, but also to avoid the great delays and expensive liability claims that result from vehicle crashes.
Route optimization software is of great help here, as it allows you to track dangerous driving behaviors like harsh braking, rapid acceleration, speeding, and sudden cornering. You can even set up real-time alerts that notify whenever a driver exceeds the speed limit of a roadway (or a speed limit that you set yourself).
You’ll be able to identify which drivers need to be retrained or outright fired for dangerous driving. That’ll make your operation a whole lot safer, and it’ll save you a bunch of money down the line, too.
Also, some insurance companies offer discounts to companies that use GPS tracking to improve driver safety. That’s just one more way Route4Me reduces your expenses.
So, do you have any questions about last-mile delivery optimization? Let us know in the comments section below.
Want To See For Yourself How Route4Me Can Boost Your Profits?
