“I understand it was a new driver, there were a lot of deliveries at multiple stops, and he messed up the addresses. I’m not blaming anybody but I have a kid who is without a birthday gift because the delivery guy left her custom gift at the wrong address and the kids there used it before we could reach it! Can you suggest a solution now, as the gift took 3 months to get customized”, an exasperated Mrs. Jones trembled over her call with the concerned authorities. The logistics organization managing the transport services of Kid’s brand had blundered big time. Wouldn’t it have been comfortable and easy for everyone, had the business been a little more organized and prepared?
The changing world of travel
With the increasing global population and constant growth, the movement of people and in turn goods is around the globe. People travel for education, careers, lifestyle, and safety and move their homes and belongings with them. With multiple changes in addresses and newer places to visit, travel gets challenging. If we consider the route of a heavy motor vehicle or a commercial vehicle, transporting raw materials, it involves pitstops at multiple clients, multiple manufacturing units of the same clients, etc. Logistics as an industry has transport and travel inscribed in it.
Foundation of Logistics
Logistics involves a lot of planning, scheduling, and managing transportation from origin to destination and the points in between. So, does multi-route and multi-address planning form the backbone of the logistics industry?
Miesha is a part-time sales rep for an E-commerce company. Before starting her full-time job for the day, she fulfills orders through deliveries around her residence. She has multiple spots to visit within a limited period of time. What if her deliveries are planned for her in advance around her job shifts and she is aware of the exact routes she has to follow in order to complete her job in time? It would be an added plus if Miesha could access it all on her mobile phone!
Shane, in other part of the world, manufactures and supplies surfing gear and safety equipment to water sports clubs on the beaches of Australia. He drives a van with goods from his factory or warehouse to his business clients nearby. Shane is also familiar with the roads of Brisbane. However, with multiple roads to visit, it is always feasible to have optimized travel directions and turn-by-turn navigation to leverage shortcuts, internal roads, traffic light roads, etc. It saves on delivery time and fuel expenses.
Plan multi-stop & multi-address routes
Adherence to multi-stop and multi-address route plans has shown up to a 25% increase in overall productivity. 45% growth has been observed in order deliveries and many happy clients.
A plethora of applications is available in the market of apps that help field reps and their managers in planning for multi-stop and multi-address travel routes. In some, the multiple stop points can be added to generate routes. Some others form routes as soon as the appointments are added to the schedule against the name of a resource. Some help in avoiding traffic and some provide optimized travel routes. Maplytics, the 5-star rated application of the Microsoft AppSource by Team Inogic provides all of it and more! Let’s see how.
Finding a multi-stop solution in Maplytics
Maplytics as its tagline suggests is a simplified multi-language geo-analytical solution for increased business productivity! It offers seamless integration between Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM and Bing Maps. The effect of this is that the CRM records can not just be visualized in a tabular format but on the map! Imagine being able to visualize all of your clients on a map that is spread globally. Decision-making becomes super easy with visual content.
Auto Scheduling in Maplytics
Maplytics has a number of unique features, but the ones fitting for our problem of multi-stop and multi-address routing include Auto-Scheduling. Let’s say a courier company, Mailbond, dealing in global deliveries has around 10 mailmen in one of its cities. The delivery schedules of the mail carriers can be pre-planned for the day/week on the map. Up to 20 stops per day can be included per rep and this can be done for all the active reps.
Following this schedule ensures none of the delivery stops are missed out. The schedule board has the details of the spots to be visited, the route to be followed on the map, and the driving directions to all the spots. All the clients are ensured delivery on the day.
Route Optimization in Maplytics
We scheduled the deliveries for the day for the reps at Mailbond. Now let us optimize their travel routes for them with Maplytics. The travel routes plotted in this manner skip tolls, highways, and traffic, and are either the shortest routes or the fastest ones.
These are accompanied by turn-by-turn navigation directions and the ability to search for places such as restaurants, cafes, gas stations, etc. thereby reducing backtracking and fuel and time consumption. The mailmen can even help out each other in case of emergencies due to real-time tracking and the ability to search client spots around them. Thus, multiple clients with multiple delivery addresses can all be catered to with ease.
What’s More?
To get more acquainted with Maplytics and experience it first-hand, one can write to us at crm@inogic.com. To explore the product in depth, with a free trial of 15 days, or a personalized demo within Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM / Dataverse get in touch with our Team.
For applied knowledge, do visit our Website or the Microsoft AppSource. For a quick query resolution, one can hop on to our detailed Blogs, Client Testimonials, Success Stories, Industry Applications, and Video Library.
Until then,
Happy Mapping!
