Route planning applications have revolutionised the way that courier services operate. For one thing, thanks to the innovations of route planners, couriers can operate much more efficiently in a variety of ways.
Features and Innovations of Route Planning Applications
Route planning applications help enable delivery companies and couriers to do much more than just plan their routes on a map. The best route planners also optimise the routes. That means they find the most efficient route possible.
Route planning apps also help courier companies to plan routes by detailing the number of stops on the route and the locations of those stops and accessing live traffic congestion and road construction delay reports to provide courier services with the most optimal routes in real-time.
The best route planning apps also build rest stops into the schedule, modify planned routes based on real-time updates as road situations change, and provide customers with accurate delivery windows.
Some apps even help couriers to organise packages in their vehicles to save time at each stop while others include capabilities that enable dynamic rerouting based on important variables.
Other innovations of route planning applications include:
- Being able to accommodate last-minute customer requests.
- Weather prediction.
- Voice-guided navigation.
- Customer alerts.
- Proof of delivery.
How Route Planners Make Courier Services More Efficient
By simply looking through the above features and innovations, you should have a good idea of how route planners can enhance the efficiency of courier services.
For instance, couriers will spend less time driving and they can avoid backtracking. In turn, couriers can reduce their stress levels and gain more job satisfaction.
While companies can benefit in other ways, such as reducing fuel costs, maximising driver shifts, and increasing the number of deliveries that can be made each day, which in turn allows them to maximise profits, efficiency remains one of the top benefits of using route planning apps with the latest features and innovations.
With traditional route planning methods, couriers can get stuck in traffic and miss delivery windows. When courier services use route planners, every element of the delivery process, from the warehouse to the customers’ doors, becomes enhanced and more efficient.
Courier companies can also reduce their fleet expenditures via increasing the occupancy rate and save money on maintenance expenses, which, in turn, enables vehicle lifespans to be lengthened.
Make Sure You Shop Around
There are lots of free route planners available, as well as versions you can purchase, so if you operate a courier service and you want to increase your efficiency and productivity, you should spend some time comparing different route planning apps to find the one that best suits your needs.
Some of the best are Circuit for Teams, Speedy Route, MapQuest, Route4Me, and RouteXL.
Final Thoughts
If you run a courier service and you do not yet use a route planning application, you will not be able to achieve major growth and compete with the competition. Courier services compete on speed, customer satisfaction, and cost.
Therefore, you need to utilise the latest innovations that can help to create and update routes in real-time, provide live visibility, and improve the efficiency of your operations.
Before you begin looking at different route planning apps, you should spend time looking at the problems your courier company currently faces and what you want to achieve by adopting a route planner solution.
You should then look at the pros and cons of different applications to find the one that best suits your needs and enables you to increase the efficiency and productivity of your courier services.
Speaking of productivity, you may find this post about how AI and IoT can enhance business productivity useful.
