SmartRoutes

Nutrilean, a Northern Ireland-based company that sells pre-prepared meals, was facing challenges in managing their orders and route planning optimization. The company offers both weekly subscriptions and individual orders, which meant that routes would change daily, making planning increasingly difficult. The growing popularity of their service was also making the job of creating routes, managing orders, and dealing with customer queries more time-consuming. They needed a solution that would allow them to complete the last-mile delivery for pre-prepared meal packages entirely in-house. Their goals included establishing a way of creating and managing delivery routes automatically, giving drivers all the information required to complete deliveries in one easy-to-use delivery app, and automating the creation of routes from live orders through their online store.

Castle Davitt Furniture, an Irish family-operated business, faced significant challenges in their delivery process. The company was struggling with the daily planning of their deliveries, wasting considerable time on manual route planning. They were using Google Maps for planning routes, which imposed limitations such as a maximum of 10 stops per route and no provision for adding factors like wait times at each delivery or vehicle capacity. This led to inefficient routes, with drivers often passing by homes that were due for delivery later in the day, resulting in unnecessary fuel consumption and time wastage. Another challenge was the time-consuming process of notifying customers about their orders. The team had to manually go into each order on their EPOS system and send out individual notifications, which was a drain on valuable time.

Musgrave, a leading food retail, wholesale, and food service company in Ireland, faced challenges in managing its grocery home delivery service across its 10 SuperValu stores. The company was using routing software in four of its larger stores, but it lacked essential features like a driver app, leaving them without a direct link to their drivers. In the remaining six stores, the delivery planning was done manually using a 'Daily Delivery List'. Drivers would scan the list, discuss the routes among themselves, and then decide which orders to take based on their local knowledge. This process was time-consuming and lacked efficiency. Furthermore, drivers would sometimes contact customers to check if they could deliver their orders earlier to group nearby orders together. Musgrave aimed to improve the delivery experience for their customers, gain more control and visibility over their delivery operations, reduce the time spent on manual route planning, and ensure deliveries were completed within the chosen delivery windows.

The Irish Independent newspaper was in the early stages of planning the roll-out of their home-delivery service. They had launched a premium digital and ePaper subscription in February of 2020 as phase 1 of their digital transformation. Phase two was to add a Saturday and Sunday home delivery offering. The new bundle was initially launched to service customers in Dublin and was planned to be extended to offer home delivery in more locations in early 2021. However, the direct-to-doorstep newspaper delivery presented various logistical challenges. The newspaper needed to be written, edited, printed, and delivered to readers within a tight time window. The Irish Independent faced challenges in optimizing drivers' time, providing contactless delivery, and ensuring that all information on a route would be transferred back to the depot in real-time for the support team to handle any queries on deliveries.

Outdoor Living, an Irish family-run business specializing in outdoor furniture, faced significant challenges in their delivery process. They were using Google Maps for route planning, which proved to be limiting due to its maximum input of 10 stops per route. This led to splitting the routes across two screens and restricting delivery drivers to small delivery areas. The process was time-consuming and inefficient, often resulting in drivers delivering in the same area on consecutive days or even encountering other company vans in the same area. The lack of route optimization based on specific criteria was a major drawback, leading to inefficiencies and reduced profitability. Outdoor Living's goals were to have more efficient routing, reduce time spent on route planning, optimize routes to maximize daily orders, integrate with their SAP order management system, and have a live map for better oversight and order query handling.

Ridgeway Farm, a premium quality Wagyu beef producer in Wicklow, Ireland, was facing challenges with their delivery route planning as their business grew. The farm sells its products to a wide range of customers including butchers, restaurants, and households across Ireland through their WooCommerce-hosted website. As their business expanded, the team found themselves spending more time planning and organizing delivery routes. The increasing fleet size made manual route planning more difficult and less efficient. They also had to communicate with customers more frequently to provide delivery timelines. The farm was looking for an integrated solution that would link to their online shop to efficiently plan delivery schedules, optimize delivery routes, and communicate delivery timelines to customers. This would not only save time and reduce costs but also improve customer services.

The Irish Times, one of Ireland's most widely-read newspapers, was facing a significant challenge in managing its print newspaper subscription service. Despite the resurgence in demand for print media, the newspaper was struggling with the logistics of home delivery. The Irish Times had been creating routes for drivers using a combination of paper-based and digital systems. However, every new subscription meant less capacity for a vehicle and an extra stop on the route for a driver. The routes were constantly changing due to customers going on holidays and updating subscriptions. Each new route took up to 2 weeks to organize and create manually. As subscriptions were updated daily, rerouting drivers and vans to maximize the efficiency of their fleet became a full-time job. The routes were not optimized, and the service was becoming more difficult to manage with more customer support queries to match the increase in subscriptions. The scale and intricacies of the task required a newspaper distribution management system that could solve the unique challenges of a home delivery service.

Brady Family Ham, a traditional Irish ham company with over 40 years of history, faced a significant challenge in 2020. The company had been offering a popular home delivery service during the holiday season, but the unprecedented demand due to the pandemic put their logistics under strain. The company saw a surge in online orders for their Christmas Hams and Turkeys, much higher than the previous two years. The logistics of delivering chilled, perishable food products presented its unique set of challenges. Brady Family Ham decided to take control of deliveries themselves to ensure the best customer experience. However, they needed a solution that would allow them to manage the entire distribution project efficiently and stress-free.

Deliver-It, a third-party logistics (3PL) company, was presented with a significant opportunity when they onboarded a new client. However, this new contract posed a challenge. To fulfill the contract, Deliver-It would need to expand its fleet, hire new drivers, and increase overall efficiency. The company had received data on the drop-off locations, predicted volume, and frequency of orders from the new client. However, they needed a solution to optimize their routes and vehicle designation to meet the customer's demands and obligations. The challenge was to integrate the new client's data with existing customer/drop-off data to speed up onboarding, establish a system for efficient multi-drop routing, distribute routes to drivers in bulk the night before, and maintain real-time oversight of van locations throughout the day.

Grennan Transport, a leading Agri-Transport company in Ireland, was facing significant challenges in fleet route planning and optimization. The company, involved in the manufacture and distribution of Animal Feeds, Farm Fertilizers, and Agricultural Seeds across Ireland, was seeking a solution that would account for individual vehicle and drop-site specifications, eliminate manual route planning on Google Maps, improve real-time visibility over their fleet, and reduce ramp-up time for new drivers. The unique challenges of delivering animal feeds and supplies, such as abnormal loads, specific vehicle requirements for rural areas, on-site farm conditions, and capacity limitations, made the task even more difficult. The seasonal nature of the agricultural industry also necessitated subcontracting some loads to third-party hauliers, leading to constantly changing routes and loads.

Healthwave, Ireland's first Digital Pharmacy, faced significant challenges with its home delivery prescription service. The entire delivery process was planned using paper, with delivery details exported from their order management system onto an excel spreadsheet, printed, and given to drivers on clipboards. This system was not sustainable in the long term due to the difficulty in storing and searching through these records. Additionally, there was no way of recording undelivered order items that were returned to the pharmacy. Existing pharmacy software systems did not have deliveries built in, only dispensing and sale. Furthermore, Healthwave was not pre-planning their delivery routes, with drivers using Google Maps to choose their next delivery based on their current location. This led to inefficient routes and wasted time.

Homecare Medical, a family-owned healthcare business in Ireland, was faced with the challenge of efficiently managing the home delivery of specific healthcare products throughout the country. Despite their extensive experience in product distribution and home-delivery services, they sought to further enhance their efficiency and cost-effectiveness. The primary challenge was to successfully plan routes and ensure timely delivery of these critical healthcare products. The company needed a solution that would not only streamline their delivery routes but also provide real-time updates to their customers about the delivery status.

Kerrigans, a family-run butchers business, had been delivering orders nationwide since 2015. Their website was hosted on the popular eCommerce platform Shopify, and they were looking for an integrated solution to streamline their delivery route planning as part of their existing order management process. Initially, they outsourced their delivery operations, but this led to several issues such as late deliveries, damaged goods, and deliveries going to the wrong customers. To address these issues, Kerrigans decided to get their own vans to service the greater Dublin area. However, they were using Google Maps for route planning, which required them to manually input every stop on each route. This was not only time-consuming but also unsustainable in the long run. Furthermore, Google Maps was not accepting Eircodes, making deliveries even more inaccurate. Kerrigans needed a solution that could reduce the time spent on administration, improve the delivery experience for customers, logically break up a big delivery catchment area, and connect their Shopify online store to their delivery operation without manual updates.

Le Patissier, an award-winning patisserie business based in Dublin, Ireland, faced a significant challenge when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The lockdown led to a loss of almost 90% of their regular customers as public gatherings ceased and events were cancelled. They were left with only 2 wholesale clients, forcing them to pivot to home delivery routing for the consumer market. The company had plans to set up an online store, but it was still in the early stages of development. They quickly built a temporary online shop and began offering a collection service. However, as they promoted their online store and home-delivery service, demand began to increase. They had two delivery vans and one driver, and as the volume of orders increased, they had to lease a third van. This success brought new challenges, as they were spending 3-4 hours every evening planning the driver’s routes for the next day and dealing with increased customer enquiries.

Transvalair, a worldwide logistics and supply chain solutions provider, was facing several challenges with their delivery operations. They were using a third-party software for deliveries, which they felt was outdated and in need of an upgrade. The support team for their previous software was difficult to reach, often taking hours to respond to issues. Transvalair was in need of a technology partner that was accessible and willing to grow with them. Their goals included gaining total oversight of their delivery operations, having delivery routes automatically planned, allowing customers to confirm/update booking slots via SMS notifications, having a label system for better warehouse organization, giving customers access to a tracking portal for order status updates, and having an easily accessible support team.