With customers shifting to online shopping more rapidly than ever before, e-commerce has emerged out to be the fastest-growing industries globally. According to a study, the market size of e-commerce in the United States was US$ 538 billion in 2020. The e-commerce businesses not only focus to deliver products on time, but strive for excellence to meet the expectations of their customers. These businesses are constantly on the lookout to adopt new strategies to cope up with the market dynamics.
Last-mile delivery happens to be the biggest hurdle for e-commerce organizations. Poor logistics planning not only hinders seamless delivery, but also increases operating costs for these companies. Some Key issues e-commerce companies have been struggling with:
Rising costs of fuel
The share of fuel is almost 60% of the total cost of transportation. The spike in prices affects the freight transportation companies by cutting into their net profit.
High Customer Expectations
Same-day delivery is hot on the heels of delivery businesses to connect with the demands of the customers. They also want constant updates on the expected time of arrival of their package.
Manual Route planning
Many organizations still plan routes manually with outdated methods and by using pen, paper and spreadsheets. Manual planning may result in faulty routes and inflated delivery costs.
Lack of Data
Detailed data of past routes can be used to efficiently plan the last mile delivery. Further, customer data can be helpful to deliver the products in the preferred time slots of the customers.
Transportation of Hazardous Materials
You need to select the right vehicle depending on the genre of the products, whether it is a perishable item or electronic goods. Further, hazardous materials should be transported with special care as it involves the possibility of catching fire or an explosion.
Maplytics for Logistics Planning
The versatile features of Maplytics can be an ally for e-commerce businesses in their transformation to use cutting-edge technological solutions instead of age-old practices. It can help these companies to optimize delivery routes by considering special requirements of logistics management. Maplytics provides seamless integration and sharing of Maps within Dynamics 365 CRM/ Power Apps, and it has been recognized as a preferred solution badge on Microsoft AppSource. Let’s see how the versatile features of Maplytics can be utilized for effective last-mile delivery:
Cost-saving
Companies need to shell out a huge amount of money on transporting goods due to the lack of an optimized route. With the intelligent routing solution of Maplytics, Fields reps can take the shorted and fastest route. This lowers the gasoline intake of freight vehicles. According to a study, about 40% of fuel can be saved by properly planning a delivery route. Further, fewer miles on road means less wear and tear of the vehicle, which in turn reduces the maintenance costs of the vehicles.
Reach Customers on Time
We are well aware if deliveries are not made on-time, ecommerce companies run the risk of losing business to a competitor. Field Reps can get shortest and fastest routes having multiple stops with Maplytics. Additionally, customers can get live updates of ETA when the routes are properly planned. This translates into customer satisfaction; satisfied customers can give more business and can also refer other people to your business.
Save Time in Planning Routes
Gone are the days, when route planning was done manually. Now, optimal routes can be plotted within a few seconds by considering factors like trip time, costs, and efficiency of the delivery vehicles. Maplytics gives you the flexibility to add drop-off times to suit your customers needs. Further, one can also customize the delivery waypoints according to priority.
Make More Deliveries
Sometimes delivery is canceled at the last minute by customer. With past delivery details of customers, the sales manager can add a delivery waypoint to the existing route of the driver with Maplytics. Thereafter, the manager can save and share the maps within Dynamics 365 with the optimized route with the driver through email as sharing maps in Dynamics 365 CRM is a seamless experience with Maplytics.
Report Deliveries
Maplytics is compatible with mobiles as well as tablets. The delivery personnel can log in to Dynamics 365 CRM and open Maplytics App to visualize the data of the customers from any remote location. They can open the tooltip card of a customer to view the distance from their current location to the delivery location. Additionally, when they reach a customer’s location, they can use the Check-in/Check-out feature of Maplytics to give updates of the deliveries to the manager. They can also add any notes or attachments related to a delivery using Maplytics.
Truck Routing
Trucks are generally deployed to deliver heavy or hazardous materials. Transporting hazardous materials will now be hassle-free as Maplytics provides optimized distinct routes for trucks using bing maps truck routing API. A user needs to enter details of the truck- like the number of axles, height, length, weight, etc. to get a customized roadmap for their truck.
Therefore, Maplytics can be a great tool to optimize delivery routes and efficiently organize the transportation fleet. It can provide the ecommerce companies with all route management requirements and stay ahead of their competitors with the latest technology to deliver products to customers on time.
To get hands-on this routing solution in Dynamics 365 CRM, download Maplytics today from our website or Microsoft AppSource. Maplytics is not just about route planner (multi-stop) in Dynamics 365 CRM, there’s Appointment Planning, Advanced territory management and much more, check out our video library. Please feel free to contact crm@inogic.com for a free one-on-one demo.
