Our views on route optimization

Margins for transport companies are notoriously low, as the industry is highly competitive. In order to increase profits, companies must focus on reducing costs and increasing efficiency, without compromising service levels to their customers. In today's digital world, transport and logistics businesses are leveraging the most innovative and high-performing technologies to stay competitive. Route optimization software is one of those powerful technologies that can help transport businesses save time and money by creating fully optimized delivery routes.

When it comes to automatic route planning, a common misconception is that the role of a planner becomes less important or even obsolete. We are often confronted with this misconception at the beginning of implementation projects, when planners jokingly say things like: “Well, it looks like you don’t need me anymore”. Although these statements are usually laughed off, there lies a certain seriousness behind these words as well. So you might be wondering to yourself: is it true? Is automatic route planning really a threat to the planners’ job? Let’s first dive a bit deeper into what the role of a planner traditionally looks like, and then we’ll explain how this changes when automatic planning is brought into the equation.

Every day, managers of last mile delivery are responsible for getting goods from place A to B, effectively and efficiently. Quite simple right? Actually, there is more to it than meets the eye. Imagine having hundreds or even thousands of orders a day, with one hundred trucks at your disposal. How are you going to place each order on a route, taking into account all restrictions and time windows, while minimizing the total cost? This is exactly the question of a Vehicle Routing Problem.

The ball has started to roll. After years of talking about the importance of innovative solutions for sustainable transport, we are at a tipping point. More and more transporters are opting for alternative fuels, strategic hub locations, supply chain collaborations, and innovative technologies including route optimization software, to reduce their impact on the environment. In this blog post we’ll zoom in on the latter and how its use has a positive effect on our planet.

The most important thing for a route optimizing tool is delivering a good and realistic plan. In the past, we have already discussed how bad data quality can be recognized. In this blog, we will talk about how to avoid bad routing plans.

Do businesses respect the interests of all stakeholders, do they use an environmentally sustainable approach, and are they still profitable? People, planet and profit: these are the three values of John Elkington's triple bottom line. It's a key concept in Corporate Social Responsibility that all companies must embrace if they want to generate sustainable value. It's worth emphasizing the contribution of high quality route planning software to this philosophy. Here's how.

In today's data-driven world, data is for many businesses as essential as the blood in our veins. Companies store a lot of data in all types of systems. Storing data is important, but storing low quality data makes it a useless effort. When we look at optimization packages, data is THE most important factor. Using data with low quality, equals non-usable outcomes of the optimization. Garbage in is garbage out. So, detecting that garbage and turning it into a valuable asset is an necessary first step. Data cleaning is a process that might require too much time but as experience grows, you get to know the quick sanity-checks that will often save a lot of time. Below we list some validations, ranging from 1-minute scans to deep analysis simulations.

A lot of businesses and organizations perceive planning as a tedious and time-consuming process. A Route optimization tool can help planners. But even with these kind of tools, creating a planning can still be a struggle. Here are four ways to speed up your planning process.

Profit margins of 1% or operating at break-even are no exception in today's transport sector. Lowering these margins to offer lower rates is no longer an option. Change is needed and transport businesses are forced to explore new approaches for long term profitability. These improvements can range from low-hanging-fruit to reorganizations of entire businesses. When it comes to the latter, the need for change is evident but coming up with the right plan of attack is tricky. How to minimize the risks? How to get everyone aligned? How to quickly reap the benefits?

For many reasons, sometimes less obvious ones, we fancy the step-by-step approach, starting small. Let's highlight some of them.

Successful businesses constantly work on staying ahead of the competition. Continuous innovation is simply part of the game. For business that have a substantial transport need this means, among other things, investing in quality transport optimization software. Investing is more than just putting money on the table. It includes making the right preparations for a fluent implementation to fully reap the benefits. Enterprises who innovate continuously gather experience and know the frequently occurring challenges. In this post, we point out 6 hurdles that come with a new software implementation project and how they can be overcome.