Route Planning Software: The Core of Efficient, Scalable Delivery Operations

Consumer expectations from e-commerce platforms have been shifting from speed to reliability. While fast shipping still matters, what truly influences satisfaction is knowing exactly when a package will arrive. 

Some businesses often fail to achieve the first-attempt delivery rate, resulting in significant losses and SLA breaches when the driver fails to deliver on time. However, recent research shows that 62% of consumers place greater importance on receiving an accurate estimated delivery date than simply getting fast shipping. This is when route planning software steps in to tackle this issue.

The route planning software utilizes AI-powered tools to help enterprises track their deliveries with utmost precision, ensuring they meet every standard.

For businesses and enterprises that manually plan their deliveries, it can often result in delivery delays, causing customer dissatisfaction. These inconsistencies can stem from unpredictable weather conditions, heavy traffic or improper driver management. 

If these inconsistencies happen regularly, it becomes costly for the companies as both time and fuel are wasted. Moreover, businesses that rely on 3PL services often fail to keep check of their deliveries, resulting in an imbalance of orders being delivered. 

Here are a few key inconsistencies that a business faces and how automated route planning tackles it:

1. Managing High Delivery Costs

   Delivery expenses are often the biggest challenge, with fuel, vehicle maintenance and driver hours eating into margins. Route planning software addresses this very issue by using ML-based optimization to design the most efficient routes. 

   It cuts down unnecessary mileage and reduces idle time and lowers fuel consumption significantly. Optimized routes also allow drivers to complete more deliveries in less time, maximizing fleet productivity. 

2. Eliminating Address Inefficiencies

   Missed or delayed deliveries often trace back to inaccurate addresses, which directly affect speed and accuracy. Automated route planning creates heat maps to overcome these challenges. 

   It validates and maps precise delivery points, reducing address-related errors, minimizing reroutes and ensuring drivers reach the right location on the first attempt. 

3. Optimizing Empty Back Hauls

   Returns are an unavoidable part of modern commerce and every pickup trip without proper planning adds to operational costs. A route planning software helps minimize empty backhauls by designing efficient return routes that synchronize drop-offs with pickups. 

   This ensures that when drivers head back to the hub, their vehicles are carrying return orders rather than travelling empty. 

4. Real-time Routing for Congestion and Disruptions

   Unpredictable factors, such as traffic congestion, sudden road closures or adverse weather, can disrupt even the most carefully planned schedules. Route optimization software addresses this challenge by providing dynamic, real-time route adjustments directly to drivers. 

   Instead of wasting valuable time stuck in delays, drivers receive instant updates with alternative routes that keep deliveries on track. 

5. Reducing WISMO (Where is my order) Enquiries

   Customers often panic when their order is not delivered on time and they start push the WISMO option to track their orders. For a business, this is not profitable and puts them in a negative light. 

   A route planning software, along with providing full visibility, reduces WISMO enquiries by making on-time deliveries successfully.

6. Reducing Costs While Supporting Sustainability

   Route planning software plays a key role in reducing carbon emissions. By optimizing routes, it cuts down unnecessary mileage and fuel consumption, directly lowering CO₂ output.

   It includes a green delivery window feature, which allows customers to choose eco-friendly options such as electric vehicle (EV) deliveries. 

This is why it becomes essential to incorporate software that identifies these inconsistencies in real-time. All while ensuring that the drivers are rightfully paid for the work they do. Here is when FarEye shines. A platform that offers automated route planning for businesses and enterprises, so that all deliveries are efficient. 

FarEye's route planning software is an AI-based solution designed to optimize the transportation of goods from hubs to their final destinations. This software utilizes algorithms, data analytics and historical data to design the most efficient delivery routes. 

Here are a few ways in which FarEye offers its solutions: 

1. Tracking Unpredictable Conditions

   The software takes into account multiple constraints, including actual weather conditions, local regulations and parking availability and plans a route for the drivers.

2. Utilizes Historical Data

   Most importantly, the software leverages data from previous deliveries to continually improve and provide better solutions.

3. Driver Parameters

   Driver's rest time is prioritized, ensuring the driver gets adequate rest for long route deliveries. Deliveries are also planned in a manner where a driver makes the maximum amount of deliveries in the least time. 

4. Offering API (Application Programming Interface)

   For businesses that have rented fleets, FarEye's software provides an API. This provides rules and protocols for easy communication.

5. Catering to Multiple Industries

   FarEye covers all the major industries for delivery routing, providing routing solutions for every kind. These solutions mainly include parcel deliveries, big & bulky deliveries, hyper-local deliveries and more. 

Automated route planning utilizes available resources to plan the most efficient and fastest route, thereby maintaining customer satisfaction. It does so all while meeting sustainability principles, Department of Transportation (DOT) compliance and unpredictable constraints.

The key aspects that route planning software works on:

1. Attempting Bulk Deliveries Without Chaos

   Route optimization software streamlines bulk deliveries by intelligently assigning drivers and mapping delivery locations through heat maps, ensuring time and costs are optimized. 

   It also monitors weather conditions and road blockages in real time, helping fleets stay on schedule and ensuring deliveries reach customers as promised.

2. Maintaining First Attempt Delivery Rate

   Effective routing software minimizes the risk of SLA (Service Level Agreement) breaches by using historical delivery data to suggest smarter, more efficient routes. It helps maintain first-attempt delivery rates, which improve customer satisfaction and boost driver performance. 

3. Ensuring Customer Satisfaction

   Route planning software keeps customer satisfaction at the core by ensuring timely and predictable deliveries. The more deliveries are made on time, the more satisfied the consumers will be. This, in turn, will also help reduce WISMO ("Where Is My Order") enquiries, putting the business in a positive light in terms of timely deliveries. 

Lastly, let us look at a case of an African retailer that faced logistics challenges due to poor order deliveries. Disorganization management drove up their costs and disrupted the delivery performance and fueled fueled WISMO (Where Is My Order) inquiries.  

FarEye provided a customized solution that showed undeniable results:

• 15% delivery time reduction
• +15 increase in NPS (Net Promoter Scores) points
• 5% increase in FADR

FarEye successfully implemented a streamlined carrier integration methodology, helping optimize the retailer's shipping processes. It accurately distributed delivery load, yielding a cost reduction of approximately 3% per delivery during a 100% year-over-year growth in shipment volumes.

Studies show that AI-based delivery optimization has lowered fuel costs by 5% and cut maintenance expenses by nearly 30% compared to traditional logistics methods. This makes it important for enterprises and businesses to adopt AI-optimized delivery operations that are efficient and scalable.

Businesses can receive many benefits besides cost savings when adopting FarEye's route planning software. Smarter routing translates into more first-attempt delivery successes, fewer WISMO enquiries and happier customers who trust a brand to deliver on time.

In a market where delivery experiences and customer loyalty are valued, opting for AI-driven route optimizations becomes profitable. It builds a foundation of a trustworthy, scalable and future-ready logistics.

Sources:

https://capitaloneshopping.com/research/ecommerce-delivery-statistics 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/389987796_AI-Powered_Route_Optimization_Reducing_Costs_and_Improving_Delivery_Efficiency