16 Benefits of Driver Route Software

In this article, we take a look at the benefits of the driver route software.

After reading this, you’ll get a better understanding of the software and how it can help you better manage your delivery.

So if you want to:

• Cut costs and overhead.
• Deliver more orders.
• Generate more profit.
• Have better drivers.
• Build a better delivery.

You’ll love the benefits that we’ve prepared in this article.

Let’s get started.

#1 Improved Driver Management

How well you manage your drivers depends on your ability to:

• See where your drivers are and what they are doing
• Make decisions based on information from the road
• Organize drivers efficiently across the last mile
• Issue tasks while drivers are on the road
• Ensure drivers follow your plans and instructions

Having all five things in place allows you to build a fleet that can support an agile delivery operation.

Traditionally, you’d have to have a team of experienced drivers, planners, and dispatchers to achieve this.

You’d have to rely on their skills to get the job done.

Each one of your team members would have to be available all the time, as well.

But that’s not always the case.

For example, a driver can become sick or indisposed for another reason. To replace him, you’d have to find a driver with equal knowledge of the delivery area.

That’s rarely possible. This means there’s a risk that the delivery can grind down to a halt.

With driver route software, you don’t have to rely on individuals because the delivery process is automated.

You can replace drivers at a moment’s notice, because all of the tasks, schedules, directions to drop-offs, and other instructions are available to them via the driver delivery app.

As for route planners and dispatch, they can quickly learn how to use the software.

This means anyone can manage drivers using the platform at the transportation hub.

At the same time, the software is a dynamic solution.

Dispatchers and operations managers have complete control and visibility over the last mile and the drivers on the road.

This ensures that you can manage and monitor the performance of the entire fleet in real-time.

But it also allows planners to schedule tasks and deliveries as soon as order requests arrive.

#2 No Manual Dispatching

Are you still manually planning deliveries, schedules, and routes? It may be time to stop.

Besides automating various operations, driver routing software also removes the need to manually dispatch drivers.

The software consists of two main components:

• A delivery platform
• A delivery driver app

Both of these components are integrated.

So once you plan the routes and schedules via the platform, the information is automatically uploaded to the app where drivers can access it.

• Route planners DON’T HAVE TO print out schedules and routes.
• Dispatchers DON’T HAVE TO call drivers to physically request delivery assignments.
• Drivers DON’T HAVE TO worry about manually reporting progress back to dispatch.

Instead, drivers can use the app on their phones to concentrate completely on their driving.

While planners and dispatchers can use the additional time to focus on other key areas of your business.

#3 Offer More Delivery Options

Consumers appreciate having a choice.

In fact, consumers are six times more likely to buy a product or service if they can choose from 5-7 different options, according to expert Sheena Iyengar:

You can apply the same logic to delivery.

If consumers can choose from several delivery options, it’s more convenient to choose a type of delivery that suits their needs.

Customers will be more likely to use your delivery.

The extra choice will also make it easier to attract new customers while retaining old ones.

But what delivery options do your customers want?

Most customers want two things from a delivery:

• To receive their orders faster
• To receive orders at a lower cost

But to offer rapid fulfillment and low-cost delivery, you need to increase the efficiency and speed of your operations.

The only way to successfully do that is to use driver management software to automate the delivery process.

Reducing operational waste and

With the help of driver management software, your delivery is automatically faster and you can offer different delivery options, including:

• Free delivery (7-day or once per week delivery)
• Low cost, no-rush delivery (5+ business days)
• Next-day delivery
• Same-day delivery
• Local delivery (city or 3-5 kilometers)

#4 Faster ROI

Driver software has great potential to give you a quick return on your investment.

The software helps you to automate the route planning process which means you don’t need to rely on a professional route planner.

You can simply train anyone on your team to handle this responsibility.

While drivers won’t have to depend on whether your route planner is at the office or not.

With optimized routes, drivers complete drop-offs faster.

With less time on the road, they save you fuel and they save you money.

They also boost key metrics in delivery logistics, like the number of drop-offs and on-time delivery.

So you get to handle more orders.

And more orders means more money in your pocket.

All of this cuts a lot of operational waste and improves the performance of your delivery fleet.

#5 Better Driver Safety

Driver route software is meant to decrease the times that vehicles spend on the road. Which automatically improves safety.

When planning the route, the software takes into account routes with minimal turns, as well.

The fewer turns your drivers make to cross the line of traffic, there’s less of a chance of an accident.

Also, thanks to driver route software, you can use the system’s routing API to integrate with third-party apps to track weather reports and road conditions.

And that additionally protects your drivers on the road.

#6 Agile Decision Making

An agile delivery operation is a modern approach to delivery which means that it allows you to adapt to change and improve the speed and effectiveness of your activities.

Without speed, you can’t build an agile delivery operation and effectively react to the reality of day-to-day operations

You can adapt and even scale up this strategy with the help of driver route planning software.

Also, by improving the whole decision-making process, you can achieve all five dimensions of agility:

• Alertness
• Accessibility
• Decisiveness
• Speed
• Flexibility

Improving agility literally means improving every aspect of your operations including structure, processes, technology, and people.

The software gives you:

Full access to a feature-rich environment that works in real-time, which means you have complete visibility and control over the whole operation while being able to make sudden decisions if needed.

Simply, with better efficiency and greater speed, you will make more profit and lose less money.

#7 Driver and Delivery Tracking

When planning routes manually, you may lose the track of your drivers.

But, if you use delivery drivers software, that can’t happen

The route planning tool automatically locates drivers and updates their position on the map on your screen in a matter of milliseconds.

The software uses geolocation and GPS positioning.

Thanks to geocoding, you can track fleets, vehicles, drivers, or orders across the last mile.

Besides that, it enables you to:

• Register arrival and departure times
• Verify vehicle location around the clock
• View estimated times of arrival
• Compare planned vs. actual time of arrival
• Collect electronic proof of delivery

Also, it’s crucial to let your customer be a part of the process.

Once the dispatcher assigns a task to a driver, customer service can use the software to generate a tracking link and send it to the customer.

So they too can keep the track of their delivery in real-time.

#8 Bigger Delivery Fleet

It was never easy to improve last-mile delivery, but now thanks to COVID-19, it’s even harder.

All of a sudden, the delivery of essential goods, like foods and medicine, became one of the most important factors in the delivery industry.

What the state of delivery in times of the coronavirus has taught us is that software solutions can help you overcome this problem.

First, you can plan deliveries so there’s no wasted space inside of your vehicles.

You can also ensure that both drivers and vehicles don’t have a lot of idle time.

But you can use the software to raise the stop density, as well.

This means you can reduce the time it takes to fulfill any order.

The less time you spend per delivery, the more order requests your delivery will be able to handle.

So driver route software helps you optimize your operations and maximize their capacity.

#9 Increase Route Density

Route density is probably the most important factor when it comes to improving the cost-effectiveness of your delivery operations.

The higher the route density, the less it costs to fulfill an order.

With the help of the software, you can increase the number of assignments for each driver.

And because delivery driver software is a dynamic solution, it lets you increase the number of orders per route beyond that.

If there’s room in the driver schedule, you can add new tasks to it and dispatch orders in real-time.

So as the route density goes up, costs come down. All of a sudden, your delivery is more profitable than before.

#10 Measure Key Delivery Metrics 

Measuring and calculating key performance indicators (KPIs) is crucial for your business. Why?

First, it lets you take a quantifiable approach to assess the performance of your delivery.

At the same time, it helps you to identify the strengths and weaknesses in your operations.

The data you get can help you follow up on driver progress, but also discover waste in the delivery process.

You can see whether the tactics to grow your delivery are making an actual impact or you need to take a different approach.

Calculating KPIs isn’t possible without technology.

With the help of driver route software, you can track various KPIs, including:

• Number of deliveries
• Average time per delivery
• The average cost per delivery
• On-time delivery
• Order accuracy
• Time in transit to distance
• Vehicle capacity vs. available capacity

#11 Reduce Fuel Consumption

When it comes to delivery and field services, fuel is definitely a big concern.

Controlling fuel costs is not an easy job. Just think about the price of fuel that continues to rise.

Keeping fuel costs down is a priority that is not easy to achieve.

Some companies are downsizing vehicles and others are buying fuel in bulk when the price is convenient.

All of this can improve fuel efficiency, but the only way to really reduce fuel costs is to use technology.

Driver route software can help you to improve fuel consumption at all levels of your operation.

In order to cut fuel costs, you need to map routes with multiple stops and of course reduce delays.

Route optimization software takes into account all the key factors when creating a perfect route, such as vehicles, drivers, traffic patterns, types of roads, and junctions.

According to the EPA, drivers can influence the fuel economy of your organization by as much as 33%.

#12 Improved Driver Navigation

Ensure drivers follow the most optimized routes, with clear instructions, guidance, and navigation for each task directly through the driver route software.

An important part of the software is the driver app, which enables your drivers with all the information they need at their fingertips to work effectively and efficiently.

The app is connected with Google Maps or Waze so drivers can use it also as a GPS.

The delivery driver app makes it easier for drivers to navigate unknown delivery areas, but it also ensures that every route to their destination is optimized.

#13 Streamlined Communication for Dispatchers and Drivers

The delivery driver app has an onboard chat that allows drivers to be in touch with customers using a mobile app for drivers.

It’s not a secret that customers love direct communication. That’s because it makes them feel like they’re doing business with a human, rather than a company.

This facilitates your business to use delivery management software to improve customer experience.

Delivery driver mobile app streamlines both customer-driver communication and internal communication among teams.

With the help of the mobile delivery driver app, dispatchers can adjust routes as needed without actually having to speak to the drivers.

Drivers can stay in constant contact with their fleet managers without communicating all the time which raises their safety on the road.

#14 Vehicle Route Planning and Delivery Scheduling

It’s not important whether you use an internal vs. external fleet, you are still planning routes around multiple vehicles.

There is a big chance that you don’t have all the same vehicles and that they don’t have the same capacity.

With driver route software you can easily include the characteristics of every vehicle in the planning process.

Which will make sure all of your vehicles are running efficiently and at maximum capacity without losing money to idleness.

#15 Higher Driver Performance and Efficiency

Let’s be honest and admit that humans can’t optimize routes with multiple stops as efficiently as software.

Even if your dispatcher is the most organized person out there, we can all get tired, we’re sometimes late for work, or we get sick.

That’s why one of the main benefits of driver route software is consistency, reliability, and precision.

This fact is that the software is really helpful to your organization because it helps you solve some of the biggest mistakes in delivery management and planning.

And it’s helpful to drivers because they know they can rely on their route optimization app to solve any of their problems at any time of the day.

A good app will always do its job in a matter of seconds, and that enables drivers to focus on their driving.

With the help of the software, there is no additional stress of having to multitask while trying to get to the destination as fast as possible.

And with a better focus on the road, there’s also less chance of an accident.

#16 Higher Customer Satisfaction

A while ago Jeff Bezos said:

“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.”

All the benefits we mentioned here lead to the most important thing regarding your delivery:

Happier customers.

Everyone wants and needs their packages to be delivered fast and on time.

Driver route software can make that happen by making drivers more efficient and by saving time. And it can do it for you and your business.

Always remember to treat your customers like guests.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to their happiness, right?

Are you ready to start using software?

We can help you with that.