How to Measure and Optimize Delivery Performance?

In this new post, we’re going to show you how you can measure delivery performance.

So if you want to:

Drive greater efficiency.

Find opportunities to reduce costs.

Get more customers to use your service.

Achieve excellence through continuous optimization.

Then, you’ll enjoy the actionable tips and techniques that we outline in this article.

Let’s dive in.

What Is Delivery Performance?

Delivery performance is the effectiveness of your organization to fulfill orders and ship products or services to customers. How well you perform depends on your ability to complete tasks according to the terms of delivery within the capacity constraints of your operation.

These constraints include the resources, structures, and technology you have at your disposal to run the various delivery processes involved in order fulfillment.

Simply put:

Delivery performance is how successfully you deliver goods and services to your customers.

And the only way to see that is to analyze your delivery performance.

And the only way to improve delivery performance is to optimize your delivery.

But first...

What Affects the Performance of Your Delivery?

There are four main factors that affect delivery performance. These are:

• Order Accuracy and Fulfillment: Ensuring that the correct goods and services are picked, packed, and dispatched is essential for delivering exactly what the customer ordered. Any error in order picking or packaging (wrong items, wrong quantities) directly impacts the ability to fulfill customer expectations.
  
  
• Inventory Management: Stockouts, inventory discrepancies, or poor inventory planning can result in delays or incomplete deliveries. Not having the correct items in stock at the right location when needed can prevent the timely fulfillment of customer orders.
  
  
• Route Planning and Optimization: Inefficient route planning can cause delays, missed deliveries, and increased fuel costs. Poor planning can also lead to missed customer appointment windows, which affects delivery time adherence and customer satisfaction.
  
  
• Delivery and Service Windows: Managing customer expectations regarding delivery or service appointment times is crucial. If the delivery or technician arrives outside the promised time window, it results in customer frustration, missed opportunities, or even cancellations.
  
  
• Fleet Management and Vehicle Availability: Vehicle breakdowns, maintenance issues, and availability of delivery vehicles or field service vans can disrupt delivery schedules. If the fleet is underutilized or poorly managed, it can lead to missed deliveries or delays.
  
  
• Third-Party Carrier Management: Relying on external carriers for a portion of the delivery or service can introduce risks such as delays, lack of communication, and varying service levels. Discrepancies between internal and third-party carriers can lead to inconsistent delivery performance.
  
  
• Demand Forecasting and Resource Planning: Inaccurate demand forecasting leads to overstocking, stockouts, and poor resource allocation, making it difficult to meet delivery commitments. Misalignment between demand forecasts and available resources can delay deliveries or cause partial shipments.
  
  
• Customer Communication and Expectations: Lack of communication about delivery status, delays, or changes in service can lead to dissatisfaction. Customers need to know when to expect their deliveries and be notified of any potential changes, including delays or issues with the delivery window.
  
  
• Technology Integration and Systems: Disconnected or outdated systems can cause delays in tracking orders, managing deliveries, and responding to customer inquiries. Without integrated systems, managing deliveries across different channels (e.g., in-house drivers, third-party carriers, field technicians) becomes cumbersome and prone to errors.
  
  
• Employee Skills and Experience: The performance of delivery drivers, field service technicians, and warehouse staff can significantly affect the overall delivery process. Lack of training, poor customer service skills, or disengaged employees can cause delays, mistakes, and poor service quality.
  
  
• Weather and External Conditions: Unforeseen weather events or natural disruptions (e.g., snowstorms, floods, road closures) can prevent on-time deliveries. These external conditions often affect routes, vehicle operations, and service appointments.
  
  
• Regulatory and Compliance Issues: Local or national regulations (such as driving hours, safety regulations, or zoning laws for deliveries) can restrict delivery schedules or methods. Non-compliance could lead to penalties, operational disruptions, or forced changes to delivery plans.
  
  
• Customer Feedback and Service Recovery: Negative feedback from customers, especially regarding missed deliveries or poor service, can harm the brand and reduce repeat business. Issues like damaged goods or late arrivals can trigger complaints, requiring immediate resolution.
  
  
• Internal Coordination Across Teams: Lack of coordination between internal teams (customer service, warehouse, logistics, tech support) can result in delays, miscommunication, or errors in delivery. Cross-functional silos slow down the decision-making process and affect response times to customer needs.

Why You MUST Measure Delivery Performance?

Delivery, like any other service, needs to improve to make your business stay competitive on the market.

To improve the processes, you’ll first need to evaluate the current performance. This means calculating key metrics in delivery logistics.

Measuring key performance indicators in delivery gives you insight into the state of your operations based on data.

Evaluating and regularly tracking KPIs also paints an accurate picture of the strengths and weaknesses of your delivery.

In turn, that helps you to uncover wasteful processes and errors in your performance. But also find opportunities for improvement, which can lead to greater efficiency and effectiveness.

In fact, companies that optimize supply chains have 15% lower delivery costs than companies that don’t.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, since using data and monitoring KPIs also helps you to:

• Continuously deliver operational excellence
• Raise customer experience and satisfaction
• Use delivery tactics to grow your business

What Delivery Performance Indicators You Need to Track?

#1 Number of Completed Deliveries
#2 Order Accuracy
#3 On-Time Delivery
#4 Average Time Per Delivery
#5 Average Cost of Delivery
#6 Transit Time to Distance
#7 Vehicle Capacity Utilization

#1 Number of Completed Deliveries

One of the main key performance metrics in logistics is the total number of completed deliveries.

This normally refers to the sum of all your product deliveries per month, quarter, or year.

Although it may seem obvious, the total number of deliveries is actually one of the key metrics that are used to measure other performance values.

It is the core value that helps determine the overall effectiveness of delivery performance.

For example, companies can use it to calculate the average number of deliveries, which helps them identify growth potential.

If the figure is further broken down into different categories such as product types, locations, etc. it will also help you optimize other important delivery metrics.

#2 Order Accuracy

Order accuracy, also called the perfect order measurement, is the percentage of orders that were delivered without any errors, compared to the total number of orders.

Order accuracy helps you spot mistakes that occur during the delivery process, e.g. returned or damaged products, failed deliveries, or orders placed by mistake.

Since errors can occur at any point during the fulfillment cycle, the order accuracy rate is not easy to calculate.

One way to improve that is to make it easier to submit reports every step of the way. This can be done with the help of advanced last-mile delivery solutions.

#3 On-Time Delivery

On-time delivery is a metric that tracks the percentage (or the number) of orders fulfilled within the expected delivery date.

This is one of the most important KPIs because it improves your customer experience, customer relationship, and retention.

According to a study done by Oracle, 13% of customers will not repeat the purchase if the order was not delivered on time.

Delays can be caused by a number of reasons such as:

• Wrong forecasts
• Order errors
• Inventory issues
• Supplier delays
• Late pickup
• Delivery schedules
• And more

Figuring out which orders were delivered late can help companies find and resolve the source of the problem.

#4 Average Time Per Delivery

Average time per delivery, also called the average service time metric, refers to the average time required to complete a delivery over a period of time (day, month, quarter, or year).

This metric helps you determine the efficiency of your planned delivery routes and the overall effectiveness of the supply chain.

Knowing the average time and offering precise information on delivery time can have a positive impact on customer experience. But, at the same time, improve the accuracy rate of picking up orders, and reduce the number of returns.

Comparing different average delivery times across equal time periods can help you see where the process can be optimized and improved.

#5 Average Cost of Delivery

Calculating the average cost of delivery is done based on specific key parameters such as distance, vehicle, and product type.

When you divide the sum of the vehicle, driver, fuel and other costs by the total distance, you will get the average cost based on the distance.

If you calculate based on the product or vehicle parameter, you need to divide the sum of the vehicle cost (for a specific product), driver cost, and fuel cost by the total number of deliveries.

Knowing the value of the average cost of delivery can help you make operational changes that will reduce the cost without damaging the performance.

For example, you can invest in better quality vehicles, or tools like route optimization software.

#6 Transit Time to Distance

Transit time to distance refers to the time that drivers and couriers spend in transportation from the pick-up location to the drop-off.

It compares the distance that a package travels to the time it takes it to move from pick-up to final destination.

Calculating this metric offers insight into the delivery speed and the efficiency of the delivery routes they use. That can lead to a higher-order accuracy rate and reduce the number of returns.

Once you get a clear view of the average transit time, you can also provide customers with more precise estimated times of arrival (ETAs).

#7 Vehicle Capacity Utilization

The vehicle capacity utilization KPI compares the capacity of a vehicle that is used to deliver products to its total capacity.

By dividing the available capacity with the total capacity, you will get the amount of idle space that is not used for order delivery.

Calculating your vehicle capacity utilization and applying it across the fleet will show you the current profitability of delivery operations. It will also aid vehicle routing and scheduling.

If the vehicle capacity has high availability, it means that there are inefficiencies during the loading process. Or that there is room to merge some delivery routes.

In case of a low, or negative availability, the current vehicle fleet is insufficient and should be expanded.

How Do You Measure Delivery Performance?

With the global reach of technology advancement, measuring delivery performance is another process that is assisted with modern software and tools.

What Tools Do You Need to Measure Delivery KPIs?

There are different types of supply chain management tools that can help you streamline logistic processes and measure delivery KPIs. These tools belong to the following categories:

• Shipping status tools
• Order processing tools
• Lean inventory platforms
• Warehouse management
• Bidding and spending analysis
• Supplier management
• Demand forecasting
• Analytics and reporting
• Collaboration portals
• Transportation and logistics management
• Compliance and auditing

How to Track KPIs with Delivery Management Software?

A proper delivery management software can help you with the following components:

• Automating major processes (order, processing, shipment tracking, invoicing, etc.)
• Identifying unnecessary procedures that lead to extra costs
• Improving inventory management
• Perfecting on-time delivery through coordination of activities
• Predicting possible issues
• Providing visibility and enabling communication across departments

Since the software is involved in all aspects of the delivery process, it holds invaluable data on all the major KPIs that would be hard, or even impossible to track manually.

What Can You Achieve by Measuring Delivery Performance?

Take a look at seven benefits of measuring delivery performance on a regular basis:

#1 Lower Transportation Costs
#2 Raise Delivery Speed
#3 Improve Customer Experience
#4 Plan Better Schedules and Routes
#5 Easily Scale Operations
#6 Build an Agile Delivery
#7 Continuous Improvement

#1 Lower Transportation Costs

Transportation costs make up 50.3% of all the logistics costs. Distance, vehicle capacity, urgency, delivery area, delivery accuracy, and other factors all affect that expenditure.

Being costly and quite complex, transportation is the ideal segment to focus on when it comes to improving delivery performance.

Tracking KPIs and analyzing data allows you to make quantitative decisions to:

• Optimize route planning
• Vehicle capacity
• Delivery times
• Fuel consumption
• Distribution networks
• Vehicle maintenance
• And more

It can help reduce transportation costs while keeping the high quality of delivery.

#2 Raise Delivery Speed

Delivery speed is vital for every online business and has a huge impact on the customer satisfaction rate.

At least 34% of consumers would rather shop in physical stores than online because of long delivery times.

Diligently measuring KPIs can give you insight into the productivity of your entire delivery fleet.

After analyzing different types of data related to the delivery process, you will be able to determine which corrections to make to achieve faster delivery times.

The right data can help you raise the delivery speed by optimizing delivery routes, merging reverse and forward logistics, setting order priorities, adjusting routes in real-time, and more.

#3 Improve Customer Experience

An incredible 86% of customers would be willing to pay more to buy products and services from companies with great customer experience.

Monitoring KPIs that affect customer satisfaction and performing actions based on the data gathered is the first step to forming a customer-centric supply chain.

Some of the key KPIs that can help this goal are on-time delivery, average delivery time, delivery accuracy, perfect order management, inventory management, return rate, etc.

Maximizing your customer satisfaction rate leads to more repeat orders, stronger customer loyalty, and even the growth of your customer base, which further leads to increased revenue.

#4 Plan Better Schedules and Routes

Monitoring carefully selected KPIs allows you to gather data on different aspects of route management such as planned vs. actual performance (the distance driven, number of stops, time at each stop, etc.), safety-related metrics, compliance-related metrics, cost metrics (cost per mile, engine idle time, revenue per station, etc.), and more.

All this fleet performance information can be used to plan better delivery schedules and routes.

To maximize your future route performance, you should take into consideration the data coming from three different levels: dispatchers and drivers, logistic executives, and C-suite executives.

#5 Easily Scale Operations

Scaling delivery logistics is essential for competitiveness in today’s market.

Companies constantly compete to provide more flexible and faster delivery options.

Investing time in KPI analysis offers valuable insights on how to stay ahead of the competition.

It also offers attractive new shipping options such as same-day delivery, without disrupting the quality of delivery operations.

Analyzing metrics such as average delivery time, on-time delivery, order accuracy, and many others offers data necessary to scale efficiently.

Choosing the right KPIs allows you to painlessly grow and expand your offer with the help of data-based projections.

#6 Build an Agile Delivery

Building an agile delivery operation is a modern procedure that lets companies adapt to changes and increase the efficiency of their activities.

According to McKinsey, agile operations are used by only 4% of companies, while 37% of companies started implementing the process.

Implementing agility requires access to key performance information. Closely monitoring your main KPIs helps to plan the deliveries on the go, improve the speed of delivery, and raise the level of performance.

Being on the frontline of exciting new procedures that improve the overall logistics efficiency can provide you with a significant competitive advantage.

#7 Continuous Improvement

The use of KPIs is the most efficient way to measure the overall success of an organization and to spot opportunities for improvement.

Continuous improvement is crucial for the success of any business. In this context, KPIs are used to define the actions needed to achieve improvement goals.

They also help you determine whether a potential change will have a positive or negative impact.

When KPIs are carefully chosen and regularly analyzed, companies get a chance to raise the standards of their delivery performance.

Monitoring KPIs provides a clear view of the total performance and defines quantitive steps that lead to significant improvement.

If you are ready to start measuring delivery performance, we can help you.