Is your delivery business in a position where you have no idea where your profits are getting lost and sales opportunities are getting missed?
When teams have to rely on manual or disparate systems, it may be hard for everyone to access the updates they need, whether that be reviewing PODs, locating drivers, or accessing live inventory updates. These inaccuracies result in additional administrative work that can build up over time, and mistakes can be tricky to track and correct.
Having complete control can only be accessed with the right technology. You need accurate, reliable information related to inventories, orders, customers, performance and profitability.
We’ve put together a list of ways delivery businesses can gain better control over their operations, while avoiding disruptions and reducing admin time.
Catching manual errors can be very hard to do, but digital systems can keep you notified when data doesn’t add up. Delivery systems like RouteMagic use machine learning that automatically analyses trends in your data and then warns you of anomalies. If a driver accidentally enters an unrealistic cost or quantity, your office will get notified so they can review & correct if necessary. This means you
Tracking deliveries and timestamps is critical to keeping control of your business. Track deliveries as they are executed, and receive all delivery reports, proof-of-delivery, stock adjustments, and payments as they happen on the road.
RouteMagic mobile app gives office teams a bird’s eye view of drivers alongside the exact time and location for each fulfilled order which you can use as irrefutable delivery confirmations.
Often times, one driver may have insufficient stocks of certain items they need, while another driver may be overstocked with those same items. Traditionally, taking note of any inventory changes between them would be strenuous on your reporting and administrative efforts, and pausing a route to return to the warehouse takes time out of their route.
The level of accuracy offered with RouteMagic means any inventory changes made from van to van are adjusted automatically, so drivers can work more flexibly to meet the needs of their customers.
With accurate, real-time inventory updates paired with extensive data on customer preferences and buying habits, you can optimise the management of your inventories and minimise wastage and returns.
This is what RouteMagic’s van sales system helps you with. It keeps you updated from order creation to delivery, including up-sold and damaged stocks. Knowing stock levels more coherently means you can plan promotions and discounts more accurately and minimise the chances of unaccounted-for, missing, or insufficient stocks. You can even set up 're-order' levels for important stock items so you get notified as soon as inventory falls below that level. Your staff can enter stock info manually or directly through barcode scanning.
Businesses often struggle to ensure that they have an optimal level of stock in their warehouse. Very often, they either end up losing a business due to a shortage or suffer a business loss due to wastage. It is critical to achieve optimum stock control, avoid wastage, ensure products don’t go out of stock, and prevent stock piling.
Set and enforce re-order levels with RouteMagic, once through the system, to achieve optimum stock control, ensuring products don’t go out of stock while equally avoiding stock pillage. Alerts prompt your teams when products are near expiry so you can manage how to avoid wastage with discounts and promotions.
It is essential to keep track of growth and profitability accurately, with data that your teams can use to make decisions that promise results.
Digital systems that help organise and control your order, delivery, financial, and performance information can compile all of this data, providing customisable views of various routes, drivers, customers, orders, products, and product lines. From here, you can easily create weekly, monthly, or annual reports that help you identify where to focus your efforts to smoothen any inefficiencies or profit losses.
RouteMagic quickly aligns your existing orders with warehouse stocks and invoicing systems—letting your teams coordinate effectively. It swiftly moves the entire order-to-cash cycle of businesses to a cloud based delivery system where you get customisable reports on the deliveries that help you measure the profitability of different routes, drivers, customers, and products, on a daily, weekly, monthly, or annual basis. It equips you with regular updates on activities, expediting your data-driven decisions that promise results.
This is the fifth article in the series based on optimising van sales performance, which aims to show you how you can improve van sales management with RouteMagic’s technical prowess for business growth.
Once you cover the critical aspects of optimising sales, bringing operations under your control, and ensuring stock loads and sales strategies are in place, next you need to focus on building customer service that makes your buyers your loyal and regular customers.
RouteMagic has been around for over 20 years now, providing solutions for a range of industries, sectors, and business models. We support over 100 customers and thousands of daily users, continuously improving our software to alleviate a range of challenges.
