The best dispatch routing software: 9 features of autonomous delivery routing and dispatch software
By Komal Puri | October 13, 2022
The world has turned increasingly digital and people are buying online now more than ever. A Statista report estimates that over 2.14 billion people will buy goods and services online this year. With such great order volumes and frequencies, manually dispatching orders can be a mess. Having a delivery routing and dispatch software in place can help you track orders in real-time, plan & optimize routes, and organize fleet schedules that allow you to operate at optimal efficiency. Automating route planning and scheduling of dispatches can help you save precious money, time, and other resources.
Here’s a look at everything you need to know about dispatch routing software:
What exactly is routing and dispatch in logistics?
In logistics, the term dispatch is used to describe the process by which delivery teams, including drivers and other personnel, are assigned orders based on various factors such as when the customer ordered the item, how close their location is to the logistics hub, and more.
Routing is a process that helps businesses make resource-effective choices by minimizing the distance and travel time required for delivery fleets to get from dispatch hubs to their destinations. Routing is an essential part of logistic planning and plays an important part in running a delivery-based business effectively.
Dispatch and routing go hand-in-hand in logistic planning and businesses must make deliveries as efficient as possible. Using automated dispatch and routing software can make it much simpler for businesses to manage their deliveries better, saving them money, time, and human resources.
What is autonomous dispatch routing software?
Autonomous dispatch routing software automates delivery and routing schedules and allows for the seamless coordination of deliveries across hubs without needing manual planning. Such software is built to consider various factors such as distance, timelines, order priorities as well as traffic, and other things that might impact the delivery schedule. Planning routes and preparing delivery fleets manually is a time-consuming hassle that prevents your logistics team from working on more important things that need their attention, while an autonomous dispatch and routing software could have done the job better.
How does intelligent routing & dispatching software work?
The primary purpose of deploying an automated dispatch and routing solution is to increase the efficiency of the supply chain. However, such solutions can contribute to a business more profoundly. Using these solutions can help improve customer satisfaction, streamline interactions they have with support teams and ensure quick and accurate delivery timelines. Optimizing dispatch and routing can help each delivery fleet perform better consistently and be more productive.
Everything from order processing and route selection to assigning orders to delivery fleets is handled by the software with the help of artificial intelligence. This requires no human supervision or interference as it processes data intelligently in real-time. Logistic managers can oversee and take stock of all delivery operations from an intuitive dashboard that gives you key information about how delivery operations are performing.
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Features to Look for in Modern Routing and Dispatch Routing Software
1. Automated dispatch & route planning
Intelligent dispatch and routing software can handle route planning and dispatch scheduling autonomously, requiring no human intervention. This is one of the key features of modern delivery management software, helping you make the most of limited resources.
2. End-to-end real-time tracking
Right from when an order is placed to when it’s delivered to your customers’ doorsteps, everything is taken care of by the software. This allows customer support teams and logistics managers to get real-time updates on how far along the supply chain an order might be.
3. Machine learning-powered algorithms
Machine learning and artificial intelligence-powered algorithms optimize deliveries based on not only real-time conditions but also by relating them to patterns in large data sets that are used to train intelligent algorithms.
4. Advanced analytics for KPI benchmarking
Key Performance Indicators or KPIs are an industry-standard way to measure performance. The various advanced data points that autonomous dispatch and routing software gather, make it easy to monitor performance and set achievable benchmarks for delivery fleets and logistics teams.
5. Chatbot-based customer support
Using intelligent delivery management software allows you to expedite and resolve customer support queries much faster and more efficiently. This makes it easy to enable chatbot-based customer support channels that can resolve many common customer grievances and queries instantly.
6. Live customer tracking
Customers can also track the location of their orders in real-time and get key updates on how long it would take for them to receive their orders. This minimizes the number of failed deliveries and helps customers coordinate with delivery personnel to have their orders delivered when it’s most convenient.
7. Flexible delivery scheduling
Autonomous delivery management systems allow flexible delivery schedules to accommodate any unforeseen delays and provide an updated delivery timeline in real-time. This helps delivery teams avoid clashes in delivery slots and provide customers with a more streamlined experience.
8. Single pane of glass dashboards
A comprehensive delivery management solution provides logistics teams with a single pane of glass dashboard that allows them to optimize delivery performance and identify bottlenecks within the supply chain, allowing them to work and resolve them as soon as possible.
9. Electronic proof of delivery
Proof of delivery is one of the last, but a very important aspect of a delivery team’s functions. An electronic proof delivery or e-PoD format does away with traditional forms of collecting proof of delivery by signatures on paper and digitizes it. The proof of delivery is an essential record that is required to bill customers and maintaining a record of this can help reduce liabilities arising from lost, damaged, or missing consignments.
The Last Word
When you're running a business that depends heavily on logistics and customer satisfaction, it is almost a given that technology is your path to gaining more efficiency and maximizing your profits. A dispatch-routing software system is that push that your business needs to be able to get state-of-the-art technology by your side, making it an instrumental part of your success.
Komal Puri is a seasoned professional in the logistics and supply chain industry. As the AVP of Marketing and a subject matter expert at FarEye, she has been instrumental in shaping the industry narrative for the past decade. Her expertise and insights have earned her numerous awards and recognition. Komal’s writings reflect her deep understanding of the industry, offering valuable insights and thought leadership.
