It has been difficult to plan routes for a fleet of trucks. If you own a small company, it may not have been that difficult especially if you own under 10 vehicles. If your firm does hundreds of shipments a day, this is another story. If you use a multi-drop fleet with over 50 vehicles, you need to plan routes and do so optimally. This is nearly impossible unless you use the right software.
Find the Right Software
It is becoming a challenge to find the right software with all the new products that come on the market. Here are four tips from Transfinder to use that will help find the best products and software:
1) A Good Balance of Computing Complexity: For those fleets who have a constant flow of orders and deliveries, you will not need software to build routes every day. If you do have a highly fluctuating fleet route, get software that makes the best routes for you with the ability to compute complexities.
2) Re-optimisation capabilities: For routing needs that are complex and challenging, you need to be able to re-optimise. Plan using software that can help you when you start programming your routes and that can help you reset the schedule when new orders are added.
3) Mobile routing and vehicle tracking: Drivers are able to follow planned routes if they can get turn-by-turn GPS navigation in their cabs. Route planning applications that integrate with mobility can also collect tracking data on vehicles to help you compare actual performance with individual routes planned in different versions.
4) Key-Performance Reporting: This goes along with the tip above. If you choose to use route planning software with vehicle tracking, this is valuable information that you want to access. A KPI dashboard can show you the difference between the kilometers you planned and those that were traveled.
Improve Planning Productivity
Route planning software offers automation that can be had for a lower price now that its effectiveness has been proven. It can plan in minutes what a human planner would take hours to do over the course of a day. Automation saves you money on the road and in the office.
Keep the above four tips in mind when shopping for route planning software. You will be certain to get a good return on your investment and meet your fleet planning needs now and in the future with the right software. These programs help you plan routes efficiently and this saves you travel and planning time.
