Why Food Delivery Companies Need Route Planning

Why food delivery companies need Route Planning?
You might not think you need anything more complex than a GPS if you make local food deliveries, but there’s more to just getting that customer order from A to B when it comes to food delivery.

Flexibility is key when making sure you get your customers’ orders to the right location in a timely manner, especially when traffic spikes unexpectedly. It’s times like these that you need more than a simple map. Route planning software fills that gap precisely, thanks to the advanced technologies at play. Route planning applications make delivery simpler, more efficient, and more cost-effective in ways you might not even realize. Here’s how you can benefit from adding route planning to your food delivery company.

Efficient Route Planning

Your drivers need to know the best way to get to your customers — something you can’t do without efficient routes. The less efficient your driver routes are, the higher the likelihood that you’re going to end up making late deliveries. This doesn’t exactly endear you to your customers, something that will have a negative impact on repeat orders. This makes planning the quickest routes an important part of your business.

There’s a lot of consideration that goes into route planning. Bad weather, road construction, traffic congestion, and any number of issues can turn a short drive into a nightmare. Mapping out routes by hand is usually an impossibility, but not for route planning software. Fast, accurate, and able to pull from reams of data that you would never even dream of, route planning software can optimize your delivery routes from one stop to a dozen or more.

Driver Activity Monitoring

Successful food delivery businesses thrive on being on time, much more than delivery services that route non-perishable items. Trying to get that fresh-cooked meal to your customer before it gets cold can be a seriously harrowing task even in the best of conditions. That’s why it’s important to have the ability to keep track of where your drivers are at all times.

Route planning software with integrated GPS tracking makes it easy to see where your drivers are at a glance, and often in real time. Suddenly you can discover which roads are packed and time-consuming to drive, so you can redirect your driver’s to clearer and faster to drive roads.

Overhead Expense Control

Delivery drivers don’t have much in the way of oversight. Unless they’re waiting for a delivery order to come in, they spend most of their time out and about, enjoying their freedom. It’s easy for them to take their time between destinations as they are far beyond direct supervision. However, route planning software can help you find the goldbrickers on your staff, eliminating the need to pay someone overtime for being less productive and wasting your time.

Expense control goes farther than just stopping drivers from inflating their hours artificially. However, the bigger expense by far is often fuel, but route planning software has an answer to that as well. Our software has reporting and analytics features to aid in evaluating your actual fuel expenditures, versus what they should have been after a particular route. Thus, allowing you to spot every possible delivery vehicle problem — or drivers who are putting more miles on their routes than they should.

Keeping Drivers Safe

You’ve got a duty to keep your delivery drivers safe. It’s basic human decency, as you don’t want people who work for you getting hurt. It’s also good for business, as you won’t have to keep on replacing your drivers. And, it’s good for insurance purposes, as having to pay out on insurance claims for injured drivers and damaged vehicles can easily bankrupt a company. Thankfully, route planning software is great for helping keep your drivers safe and for keeping safe drivers in your vehicles.

Route tracking software that can monitor drivers’ behavior is a major benefit in such situations. Being able to log when drivers are performing in a dangerous manner by speeding, taking corners too aggressively, accelerating too rapidly or braking too abruptly means you can easily see which of your driver’s need some special attention. Repeated bad behavior behind the wheel will also lead to grounds for termination and hopefully replace the individual with a more responsible driver.

Efficiency, Safety, Affordability

Food delivery companies rely almost exclusively on their ability to deliver their products quickly. If you want your deliveries to be on time, you need your drivers to follow the most efficient of routes in the safest manner. This not only keeps your customers happy but makes your delivery costs much more affordable than they would be otherwise. The best way to accomplish these goals is always going to be through the use of route planning software. Make sure your deliveries stand out from the rest — learn more about route planning software today.