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How Route Optimization Software Can Help Boost Business

Exploring how routing optimization software can facilitate business growth by saving time and money, boosting productivity, and improving customer service.

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How Can Routing Optimization Software Aid Your Business’s Growth?

According to conventional wisdom, in order to expand your business, you must increase your payroll. However, while the spirit may be willing, the wallet may not be. Additionally, there is no guarantee that hiring new employees will result in increased profits. When hiring new employees, you must consider their salaries and benefits, as well as devote time to training them to ensure they are competent. They must perform well in order for your investment to pay off.

Fortunately, technology can help you expand your company. If you run a delivery business, for example, you can use routing optimization software. You can increase the value of your services without relying on your employees if you use this software. Here’s how to do it.

Table of Contents

  • Save Time and Money
  • Boost Productivity
  • Improve Customer Service
  • Inform your Business Decisions
  • Conclusion

Save Time and Money

Many delivery businesses still use pen and paper to plan their routes. Because you must consider your stops, employees, and vehicles, as well as weather, construction, one-way streets, and other factors, this can take hours. Because there are hundreds of ways to create a route and thus many ways to make mistakes, the result of manual route planning is also inaccurate.

Routing optimization software allows you to plan routes in seconds (instead of hours!), with perfect results every time. Simply select your orders, and the software’s advanced algorithms will create a well-optimized and 100 percent accurate route for you. You can use the time you save on route planning to focus on the other tasks that are most important to your company.

Additionally, with efficient and optimized routes with turn-by-turn directions, your employees will visit your customers in the shortest distance and time possible, increasing customer satisfaction.

They also have more time to make more stops because they take more efficient routes. As a result, you won’t need to hire more employees to serve more customers.

Boost Productivity

A good routing optimization software solution can boost your productivity in a number of ways. We’ve mentioned the time-saving above which lets you focus on other areas of your business instead of manual route planning. But there are other ways routing optimization software can help.

One way is by using a Route Scheduling feature to assign ETAs to your stops. This way when an order is marked as delivered, you can compare the delivery timestamp with the ETA to see how far off your driver is from the mark.

Routing optimization software ensures a balanced workload for your employees. This way, you won’t have employees who are overworked because they have too many routes, while others are just waiting to clock out. Even if you add new clients, the software will assign the new addresses to employees who have less work.

Employees will also be more efficient at their jobs because they only serve the right number of customers and have a reasonable amount of work.

Improve Customer Service

Customers can change their minds at any time, as anyone in the delivery industry knows. For instance, you might get a call from a client who wants an earlier delivery. It can be difficult to meet such changing needs (especially if you plan routes manually), but it will help you build a stronger relationship with your customers. This is because it shows that you’re a dependable and trustworthy company that they can rely on for repeat business.

Fortunately, good route optimization software like EasyRoutes allows you to add last-minute orders to routes, or to reorder stops. This means you can drag and drop the stop to an earlier position in the route.

Furthermore, EasyRoutes routing optimization software includes customer notification technology, which allows you to send email notifications to customers when a delivery is leaving your warehouse, when the order is delivered, or if the order is missed.

This helps you save money on payroll by lowering the likelihood of missed deliveries. Customers will be notified when a delivery is scheduled to arrive and can ensure that they or someone else is available at the address. Because your employees won’t have to go back and forth to the same address multiple times, you’ll save a lot of money.

Additionally, you will not need to hire, train, or manage customer service representatives to handle queries because your customers will no longer need to call to inquire about the status of the drivers because they will be able to view the statuses themselves in their email notifications.

Inform your Business Decisions

If you’re unsure whether your current resources can handle a new customer, you can use the software to plan hypothetical routes. By factoring in all the information you need to analyze, you can create mock routes to determine how much you’d make from an expansion and how much it would cost you. Before you invest any money in the actual expansion, such information can include critical expenses like additional wages for your workers and fuel costs.

This is a great way to avoid wasting money on something that isn’t worthwhile. After all, acquiring a client who brings in peanuts in terms of profits isn’t good for your business and doesn’t make sense in the long run.

When you have this kind of vital information at your fingertips, expanding or growing your business becomes much easier and more profitable.

Conclusion

Can you think of any other ways to expand your company without having to increase your workforce? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Here are a quick questions to make sure you understand how routing optimization software can help your company grow without hiring more people:

  • Why is manual route planning less beneficial to your business’s growth than automated route planning?
  • When it comes to customer service, how can a routing optimization software save you and your employees time?

Would you like to see for yourself how EasyRoutes can help you increase your profits?

Whether you want to save time planning routes for your drivers, increase the number of stops they can make, or keep your customers happy by ensuring that your drivers arrive on time, EasyRoutes is here to help!

Get EasyRoutes on the Shopify App Store

Start your free 14-day trial of EasyRoutes

About Roundtrip

Roundtrip's mission is to equip every business with the software tools they need to deliver products to their customers in a delightful way. Thousands of Shopify merchants worldwide choose EasyRoutes to power their local deliveries across dozens of product categories, from meal kits and groceries to coffee, cupcakes, kibble, and so much more. Our easy-to-use route planning and delivery optimization app is certified Built for Shopify, a two-time Shopify staff pick, and the top rated local delivery app on the Shopify App Store.

"This app made us save time, work and money. It's very user friendly and offers everything we need."
Kyoto Fleurs
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