Route Planner UK

The Company

Delivery businesses are quickly emerging to help local retailers meet the need for same-day delivery created by e-commerce giants like Amazon. The startup discussed in this case study is a UK-based delivery service provider who aims to help brick and mortar retailers compete with the ever fast delivery of online companies. With dropping a pin on your location in their app, you can notify a courier to deliver your package from participating retailers within hours for only GBP 6.25. The company hires part-time drivers, bikers and walkers to make sure the delivery is made in record time and even has a tracker on their app, where users can track all the action. Simon, the product manager, is responsible for ensuring that all facets of the service run smoothly. Being that time is of the essence and their user base is continually growing, he determined that utilizing an online route planner for their couriers will help them control their most valuable resource—time.

The Issues

As the startup expanded to include almost all cities between Liverpool and Bridlington, Simon was facing:

1. Difficulty optimising courier routes
2. Inefficiency in using traditional GPS services

The number of late package deliveries was steadily rising and Simon needed to act fast in order to solve the problem.

1. He had approximately 30 couriers (10 drivers, 10 bicyclists, and 10 on foot couriers) in 27 cities whose daily routes repeatedly changed.
2. The advertised delivery time was under 2 hours but was becoming increasingly difficult to hit.
3. With a growing user base, Simon needed to optimise the delivery routes for each courier to their maximum capacity, before resorting to hiring new staff.

Using traditional GPS providers, Simon was unable to optimise a route with multiple drops, like the ones his couriers needed to make. Traditional GPS applications can only tell you the best way to get from point A to point B, but he needed something that can tell you the best way to get from Point A to B to C and so on.

The Solution

After discovering MyRouteOnline’s UK route planner, Simon felt like he had discovered the answer they were looking for. Courier routes went from looking like this:

To this:

MyRouteOnline’s UK route planner enabled Simon and his team to:

1. Shorten delivery times by 25% as couriers now got to their destinations faster.
2. Decrease salary costs by 15% because more efficient routes means less manpower needed.
3. Cut spending on fuel by 33% for all drivers.

“MyRouteOnline has truly changed the game for us!” exclaimed Simon. “We now make better use of our couriers’ time and don’t need to hire as many people as we had previously anticipated.”

The Result

The delivery service provider now increased their efficiency significantly and were quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with! Users were consistently satisfied with their lightning fast delivery time and new brick and mortar retail clients were more than happy to sign up for their services, given their good record. “Switching to the UK route planner has been one of our best decisions to date”, says Simon. “Unlike traditional GPS applications, MyRouteOnline’s unique multiple route planning system was exactly what we needed for our business to not only grow but to be as efficient as it is today.”