Vehicle routing software helps determine the most optimal route between multiple destinations quickly and efficiently.
Route optimization software uses advanced computer algorithms and heuristics and considers many constraints to plan the best route, such as:
- Delivery time windows
- Traffic congestion
- Weather
- Road intersections
- Roadblocks
- Vehicle capacities
- Sunrise and sunset times
- Avoidance zones
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When Do You Need Vehicle Routing Software?
You should use route planning software when planning routes for more than 10 destinations per day. There are many other instances when you should try vehicle routing software, too, such as:
- You spend hours planning and scheduling multi-stop routes for multiple drivers
- You want to monitor and control fuel expenses
- Customers raise a lot of complaints about delayed and missed deliveries
- Your business needs an expansion
- You want to keep your drivers safe
- The customer service team receives a lot of calls asking for delivery status
- Your drivers have poor productivity
- Reduce carbon emissions from your vehicles
- Avoid legal hassles due to road law violations and accidents
- You want to increase field service revenue without investing in additional resources
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Benefits of Vehicle Routing Software
Whether you are a mom-and-pop florist or a large logistics company, vehicle routing software is for everyone. Here’s how the software can help.
Cut Down Route Planning Hours and Schedule Routes in Advance
Organizing and reorganizing schedules, shifts, people, appointments, and deliveries every day could take a lot of time if you use pen and paper and spreadsheets for route planning.
Time is money. And you cannot afford to spend hours just on planning.
With vehicle routing software, you can plan and schedule routes in minutes. You need to add the customer addresses in the software, set the parameters, and hit optimize. That’s it!
The delivery route planner will automatically plan well-optimized routes and assign them to the available drivers.
Advanced delivery scheduling software like Route4Me lets you plan recurring routes with a specific schedule up to a year in advance.
You can identify where your business has room to grow and scale operations by planning for the long-term.
Help Retain Customers
You should try to retain the maximum of your customers to reduce customer acquisition expenses and improve your brand’s reputation and profits.
According to a report by Bain and Company, even a 5% increase in customer retention can increase your profit margin by 25%!
There are several ways you can retain customers. For example, improve the delivery experience by making on-time deliveries (which is helped by vehicle routing software) to encourage your customers to stay with you for long.
Also, try to be transparent with your customers about their delivery status. Sophisticated delivery management software like Route4Me offers a customer alerting and notification feature that helps you maintain transparency with your customers.
It allows you to notify your customers using SMS and email whenever their package is out for delivery or about to be delivered.
Plus, the Route4Me route planner comes with a customer portal that enables your customers to check the delivery status on their own. Your customers will appreciate you keeping them in the loop and reward you with their loyalty.
Reduce Fuel Expenses
Fuel price is at an all-time high resulting in a thinner profit margin for logistics companies. A multi-stop route planner has several features that help keep the fuel expenses under control.
For example, Route4Me’s map route planner helps plan fuel-efficient routes to ensure your drives can cover the maximum number of stops without wasting fuel.
Plus, it offers a reporting and analytics feature that helps you monitor fuel expenses and take necessary actions to keep the costs to a minimum.
You can even set fuel costs for different types of gas in a specific area to track your expenses to a highly accurate degree. You can use the analytics data to educate your drivers about fuel-saving procedures.
Also, Route4Me’s GPS tracking feature enables you to track vehicle movements and ensure drivers do not cross the speed limit or take longer routes unnecessarily, resulting in more fuel consumption.
Less fuel consumption means fewer carbon emissions which is good for the environment.
Learn how a route planner can help reduce fuel expenses and how last-mile delivery companies can reduce their carbon footprint.
Help Track Vehicle Movements
Planning the best routes isn’t enough. You also need to ensure the drivers follow the routes as instructed; otherwise, all your efforts will go in vain.
The best route planners like Route4Me come with a commercial GPS tracker that lets you track vehicle movements on the road in real-time on a map.
So, you would know if your drivers engage in reckless driving, cross the speed limit, make unplanned stops, or take longer lunch breaks. You can then communicate to the drivers immediately to rectify their behavior.
Plus, a GPS tracking app helps you ensure driver safety. If a vehicle breaks down on the road or gets into road mishaps, you can quickly send roadside assistance.
Also, an app for GPS tracking can help attract the best drivers to your business. Learn in detail the benefits of GPS tracking.
Replan quickly
Last-minute changes to routes are inevitable. Drivers calling in sick, last-minute cancellations, or customers suddenly asking for delivery at alternative addresses are just a few factors that can jeopardize even a well-planned schedule in the blink of an eye. And it’s not easy to make amendments across multiple driver schedules manually.
When any last-minute orders come in, or a driver calls in sick, vehicle routing software assesses the availability of drivers and distributes workloads evenly depending on their capacity and location. Therefore, you never need to worry about managing sudden requests or changes.
Vehicle routing software offers many other features that make delivery management seamless such as:
- In-app voice-guided navigation to avoid distracted driving
- Geofencing to automate check-in and checkout
- Geocoder to auto-correct any wrong addresses entered into the route planner
- eSignature for digital proof of delivery and to avoid customer disputes
- Driver breaks to ensure drivers get sufficient breaks during their journey
- Android and iOS route planner apps to plan routes and track progress on the go
How to Choose the Right Vehicle Routing Software?
Now you know the advantages of route planning software. So the next step is to opt for the right vehicle routing software that meets your requirements.
And to make sure that you choose a delivery route planner that works for you, consider the following points before making the purchase:
- The route optimization software should be easy to use
- It should allow you to plan unlimited routes
- It should not come with a long-term contract
- The software providers should offer a free trial
- The training tutorials should be easy to understand
- There should not be any other fees apart from the subscription
- The vehicle routing software should be cloud-based
But that’s not all. Learn in detail how to choose the best route planner.
The route optimization software is a MUST if you want your drivers to make on-time deliveries, make customers happy, and increase revenue. It can also help you reduce planning time by up to 80% and save significantly on driver wages and fuel expenses.
Plus, you can make your drivers and field service reps happy by providing better routes and workloads. Happy employees mean satisfied customers and high productivity, increasing sales and profits.
Legacy software is a thing of the past. Therefore, you should opt for a cloud-based route planner to make your operations agile and responsive.
Want To See For Yourself How Route4Me Can Make Your Delivery Operations Efficient and Boost Profit?
