Our article dives into how delivery route optimization software helps reduce costs and improve effectiveness. A rough estimate on developing such software is at the end.
Highlights:
- Poor route planning means wasted fuel, longer delivery times, as well as higher operating costs.
- Robust courier route optimization software fully adapts to real-time conditions.
- Such software also streamlines dispatch management and resource allocation and improves workflows.
What’s the main purpose of solutions for delivery route optimization?
Many would probably answer that it’s planning the most efficient route for the driver. However, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Among many other things, delivery route optimization software helps improve delivery efficiency in terms of time and cost, increase customer satisfaction, and even analyze drivers’ behavior on the road and implement new safety measures. So, how can a business implement a solution like this? And how significant will the benefits be?
Mind Studios has been developing custom software for logistics and delivery companies for years. A route optimization solution for a printed goods delivery company, an on-demand delivery service for the Danes, and an app for an international cargo transportation company are just a few of our projects for the industry.
So, if you are looking for ways to optimize your deliveries, we are here to help you out. Just contact us for a free consultation.
In this article, we explain how you can make delivery route optimization software part of your day-to-day operations — and how our team can assist you with it.
How route optimization software can help your business
The main aim of courier route planning software is to improve route planning, increase delivery or transportation efficiency, and, as a result, cut costs. It also helps control various aspects of the delivery process, including drivers’ schedules, fulfillment estimates, complying with legal requirements, and so on.
It’s a common misconception to narrow down the functionality of delivery route optimization solutions to the task of finding the shortest route based on time and distance. In reality, advanced software platforms use AI algorithms and mathematical models to analyze large amounts of data — and help managers make quick and calculated decisions.
— says Dmytro Dobrytskyi, CEO of Mind Studios.
Typically, the development of modern route delivery software is done with the following factors in mind:
By processing all this information, courier route optimization software is more than just a tool for determining the shortest route from one location to another. It can optimize the route on the fly, generate delivery performance analysis, and help businesses save time and resources.
Mind Studios’ insight: One of the biggest issues in logistics is finding the balance between effectiveness and unexpected variables. Our experience has shown that even the most well-planned routes can become ineffective due to real-time conditions (like last-minute order changes, road closures, or similar). That’s why it is important to go for dynamic route optimization, meaning your system will be able to recalibrate based on real-time data. This helps streamline your delivery timeframe, prevents fuel waste, and lowers vehicle maintenance costs.
Benefits of route optimization software
Now, let’s get into details and take a look at the most significant fleet routing software advantages.
Boosted productivity
One of the most significant benefits of using route optimization is that it allows employees to get more work done in less time and with fewer resources. How exactly does it happen?
Efficient route planning reduces the distance and time needed for each delivery, meaning businesses can complete more deliveries in a day and cut costs of transportation. Naturally, this leads to companies growing quicker and becoming more profitable.
Reduced operational costs
The most obvious way in which courier routing software cuts operational costs is by saving businesses money on fuel thanks to finding time-efficient routes. However, that’s not all. By analyzing factors such as vehicle and load volume, such solutions can help use each vehicle to its fullest capacity and reduce the need for additional trucks.
Capacity utilization can also decrease travel time — and thus reduce maintenance costs, since the vehicles won’t be wearing out during inefficient trips.
Efficient driver management
Building effective routes isn’t enough, especially if your company works with numerous drivers. The development of logistics route optimization should also give your managers and dispatchers an opportunity to monitor whether the drivers are sticking to the routes and schedules the system has planned for them. Subsequently, this allows you to analyze the efficiency of the drivers working for you.
Seamless rerouting
One of the major benefits of courier route planning software is the functionality that enables easy rerouting. Thanks to real-time access to various sources of data on the factors affecting the route, drivers can get helpful notes and even renewed routes in case of traffic, unexpected weather conditions, customers changing schedules, etc.
On top of that, GPS-based solutions can also check new routes in real time, make sure they are safe to drive through, and alert the dispatchers about the changes.
Improved drivers’ safety
Route optimization software can also be used to make sure the transportation process complies with road safety regulations. For instance, managers can make sure the drivers don’t exceed the maximum permissible hours of driving without a break, follow their speed limits, monitor any traffic law violations, and inform drivers of any dangers on the road.
As a result, this helps drivers avoid collisions and other accidents, and therefore, saves you money on possible delivery delays, additional car repair expenses, and legal costs in case of accidents.
Enhanced customer service
When it comes to delivery services, meeting deadlines is vital for good customer reviews. Integrating route optimization software into delivery and transportation operations helps stick to the ETAs, quickly handle emergencies, and avoid delays or failed deliveries — or at least efficiently manage customers’ expectations and eliminate bad reviews.
Another thing to keep in mind is that each year, customers’ expectations grow higher and higher, with services like same-day and same-hour delivery becoming more common. Developing software to optimize delivery routes is what can help you meet these expectations, stay competitive, and increase brand loyalty.
Green strategy implementation
By implementing route optimization software, businesses become open to a more sustainable approach that helps reduce carbon emissions and alleviate traffic congestion, which leads to improved air quality.
Additionally, route optimization solutions assist with improving resource management and even push companies to explore more efficient and sustainable transportation models, like bicycles, electric vehicles, etc.
Maximize your fleet’s management with a custom solution. Schedule a consultation with our tech team to discuss how we can help you.
Six features that will lead you to success
When working with a software development partner, together you will figure out which functionality suits the needs of your business best. However, there are certain key features of route planning software that are beneficial to most companies dealing with transportation and delivery. Let’s go over the most essential ones.
1. Fast and dynamic route planning
The main point of optimizing routes for delivery is to get the most efficient routes for your fleet planned in a matter of minutes. Yes, even if the route has thousands of orders. Moreover, the suggested plan needs to have a high route density so that it makes financial sense.
On top of that, the delivery process that involves multiple vehicles and orders will inevitably go through unexpected changes to the schedule. The factors that cause these changes include additional drop-offs, on-demand orders, appointment cancellations, etc.
That is why your software needs to allow for dynamic route planning, meaning the managers and the drivers can quickly reroute on the go without losing efficiency.
Mind Studios’ recommendation: If you want to go even further, you can opt for an AI-powered route recalibration. It continuously analyzes both historical and real-time data, can predict potential disruptions, as well as suggest the most optimal route adjustments before the delay happens.
2. Easy data management
Businesses working with deliveries have to deal with lots of data, including information on customers and their orders, drivers’ schedules, tasks, appointments, vehicle details, etc. Therefore, it makes sense to have a solution that can automatically input, import, and share all that data, as well as allow manual editing.
3. Geofencing
Shortly put, this functionality allows dispatchers to ensure the drivers are sticking to the designated routes by mapping virtual boundaries around the area of the scheduled deliveries. If the GPS-tracking system detects a vehicle going outside the zone, the system will automatically alert the dispatcher.
Not only does it bring more visibility to the delivery process, but it also allows dispatchers and managers to quickly help the drivers solve any issues or dangers that might arise on the route.
4. Integration with other systems
It is possible (and even highly recommended) to integrate route optimization software with other systems. In addition to order management solutions, this often also includes inventory management systems, fleet tracking software, navigation software, payment gateway integrations, cloud services, chatbots, and more.
Mind Studios’ recommendation: Putting a robust API strategy in place will allow you to ensure smooth integration with other tools you use, be it order management, inventory system, real-time navigation, etc. Plus, it will allow you to scale without any disruptions.
Need to seamlessly integrate your routing solution with your logistics ecosystem? Get in touch to find out how we can help you out.
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5. Sharing routes with teams
As a rule, the route optimization software has a driver app, a dashboard, and a control panel for planning routes and scheduling order deliveries.
These components should work together and provide cross-platform data access to streamline the workflow, automate reports and updates, and bring miscommunication between drivers and dispatchers to a minimum.
6. Reports and analytics
Logistics route optimization can also help businesses make data-driven strategic decisions through reports and analytics features. For instance, managers can analyze overall delivery and individual drivers’ performance, look into customer satisfaction rates, and make sure the company complies with safety regulations.
Mind Studios’ recommendation: Predictive analytics can help you anticipate potential bottlenecks, optimize delivery performance, as well as refine your operational strategies based on real-time and historical data insights.
Common challenges in building delivery route optimization software
Building delivery route optimization software goes beyond creating a solution that maps out the shortest path between two locations. It’s a complex process that involves numerous steps, and each of them may come with its share of challenges. If not addressed, even the most robust software can fall short.
Here is a list of the common pitfalls and how you can overcome them:
Challenge #1: Handling real-time traffic and route adjustments
Navigation through real-time data (such as road conditions, traffic congestion, or others) can result in significant delivery delays. In this case, static route planning is ineffective and could lead to increased fuel costs and customer dissatisfaction.
Mind Studios’ solution
AI-powered dynamic courier routing software is a way out of this situation. It can dynamically adjust routes based on live traffic conditions, road closures, and other variables, which means timely and effective delivery.
Challenge #2: Managing high volumes of data
Typically, delivery operations rely on huge amounts of data, including GPS tracking, driver performance, order management, etc. And processing such a large amount of data effectively without slowing down the system might be problematic.
Mind Studios’ solution
Route optimization solutions created by Mind Studios seamlessly integrate with GPS trackers, IoT devices, and other data sources to process and centralize even large datasets in real time. This helps optimize both decision-making and route planning.
Challenge #3: Ensuring seamless integration with other systems
Logistics companies oftentimes use multiple solutions to optimize their fleet management, customer orders, and logistics tracking. If they are not seamlessly integrated, chances are you will get data silos, inefficiencies, and manual errors in your route optimization.
Mind Studios’ solution
A well-defined API strategy allows us to seamlessly integrate your fleet management, inventory systems, and order management tools. It also improves operational efficiency and prevents any disruptions.
Challenge #4: Compliance with local and international regulations
Working in logistics, you have to know how important it is to comply with different legal and safety regulations. Managing drivers' working hours, data privacy, environmental impact, and other factors might become a nightmare for many.
Mind Studios’ solution
At Mind Studios, we focus on building compliance-ready delivery optimization software that integrates regulatory considerations and helps logistics businesses meet industry standards.
How much does it cost to develop delivery route optimization software?
Route planning and optimization software development and implementation can be a costly investment, especially for small businesses. But we are here to prove that, in the long run, it is definitely worth it.
Here is a rough route optimization software cost estimate with web desktop and mobile responsive versions tailored to your business needs if you outsource it to an agency like Mind Studios.
| Stage | Time, hours | Cost, USD |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery stage | 80+ | $4,000 |
| UI/UX design | 200+ | $9,000 |
| Frontend development | 680 | $30,600 |
| Back-end development | 800 | $36,000 |
| Testing | 320 | $12,800 |
| Project management | 320 | $12,800 |
| Total cost and time needed to develop a logistics route optimization software | 2,400 | $105,200 |
The estimate is based on the list of features we’ve made in the previous sections, and on a $45 hourly rate, which is common for Eastern European software development companies.
Keep in mind that it is still quite rough, and our team would be happy to create a delivery route schedule optimization software that fits both your budget and business needs.
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Our experience
Logistics and transportation are among Mind Studios’ focus industries, so we have quite a few products to share with you. Here are just some of the projects our team has worked on over the past few years.
Route optimization solution for a newspaper delivery service
When working on this ongoing project, we’ve determined the number of problems the newspaper delivery company could solve through the digitalization of certain processes. The most urgent challenge was to help the business cut costs on deliveries, as well as make them more efficient and transparent.
Together with our clients, we’ve worked out a software solution that would:
- Calculate the most time- and cost-efficient routes based on data about traffic patterns.
- Automate the process of odometer number registration on each vehicle at the start and end of the shift.
- Share data with the supervisors and report to them in case of any emergencies or clashes between forecasted and actual distances.
On-demand delivery app for the Danish market
James Butler, a food delivery application, was definitely a challenging yet extremely successful project we worked on. The idea behind it is the service that provides delivery from physical shops to the customers’ doorsteps within 30 minutes.
To implement the idea, we had to build two applications:
- An app for the buyers to create shopping lists, place orders and pay for them, track order status, and contact delivery personnel.
- An app for the delivery people where they can define work area, receive orders in real time, monitor progress, and contact buyers.
What is more, each app had to be built for both Android and iOS in just three months. Spoiler alert: we did it, and James Butler managed to reach the set KPIs only three months after the soft launch.
These aren’t the only projects for the logistics industry our team has worked on. Our portfolio also includes a dispatching module for a supply chain monitoring system, an order tracking app for a cargo transportation company, and more.
Conclusion
Route optimization solutions are no longer something reserved for big enterprises only: any business or organization can benefit from integrating them — in terms of cost, performance, and sustainability. The numbers alone are proof: according to Straits Research, the delivery route optimization software market size is expected to reach $12.41 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 11.56%.
It’s clear that integrating these solutions into your day-to-day operations is worth it. All that’s left to do is decide which development option to go with. Depending on the budget and the requirements, both ready-made solutions and custom-built ones can be viable options.
If you’re looking for a development partner with relevant expertise to build the perfect solution for the specific problems of your business — Mind Studios is ready to help. Just fill in a short contact form, and we’ll arrange a free consultation to discuss your requirements and expectations.
