Logistics is an integral part of running a business that ships products to customers. Many businesses struggle with it, with the last mile often singled out as the most inefficient and costly part of the supply chain. With customers demanding faster and more cost-effective deliveries, businesses would do well to find out the causes of logistics problems within their supply chains and rectify them. Here are some challenges they should focus on.
Address Location and Delivery Allocation
A major reason for delivery failure is the inability to locate addresses. This can be due to poor address quality caused by incorrect addresses and poor or no signage when the driver tries to deliver the shipment.
Poor address quality can leave a driver driving around a maze trying to make sense of a new location, which can be incredibly frustrating. If they have other packages to deliver, they might skip one that is too inconvenient for them.
Destination grouping and management can help, especially if the allocated driver understands the general area of the deliveries. However, many businesses still do manual allocation which introduces human error. When this happens, packages can be left behind when a driver is taking a certain route or even be assigned to a driver taking a different route.
The solution here is to use technology for automatic allocation and detailed maps so drivers know the exact location of the addresses where they will make deliveries.
Late deliveries remain a primary concern for delivery and shipping companies and businesses. When businesses cannot ensure their products reach their customers on time, it can get quite expensive to rectify this issue. For food delivery services and associated businesses, they have to incur losses because they do not get a second chance to make the delivery.Additionally, late deliveries can increase customer churn and harm the business’s reputation.
Businesses need robust and efficient last mile delivery plans which can help ensure timely deliveries. Many businesses have turned to technology that eliminates inefficiency, with different software used to provide different solutions.
Once businesses understand possible causes of inefficiencies that lead to last mile delivery problems, they can use last mile delivery logistics solutions to optimize routes, provide real-time ETAs, and create reports that help businesses understand where the bottlenecks are so they can eliminate them.
Technology is very good at reducing or removing the unpredictability that is inherent in logistics. However, it cannot eliminate unpredictable acts of God or man. For example, it cannot tell whether a tree will fall on the road or whether there will be an accident on the route.
Such acts are beyond control and happen about 20% of the time for businesses that do frequent deliveries. The only thing they can do is communicate the delay to their customers. Doing so is a lot easier if they are using the right logistics management solutions.
Logistics has made it possible for businesses to deliver products to customers easily and faster. However, it is not a perfect arrangement as businesses have to overcome some challenges to ensure everything works as expected. Technology is an obvious solution for dealing with many of these logistics challenges.
