PODFather route optimisation benefits

PODFather’s route optimisation solution is helping 30,000 users every day to produce cost effective and resource efficient route plans that deliver big benefits to companies working in the logistics, home delivery, food & drink, construction, field service and healthcare sectors.  PODFather has been developing and delivering routing and scheduling software solutions for over 20 years and our software has been proven to eradicate paper tickets, cut costs, improve efficiency, and cut carbon emissions for many businesses across a wide variety of industries. 

Improve vehicle efficiency

With PODFather planning your routes you can ensure that you are making the most of your available vehicle resource.  Ensure vehicle capacity is used to the max, at the same time as ensuring that your trucks and vans are not overloaded.  Move jobs between routes to assess the mileage implications.  Plan to fill your vehicles, or to spread work evenly across the fleet, you choose, and PODFather will optimise your route plans accordingly.

Reduce empty running

One of the big benefits of using an automated route planning solution is that you can reduce empty running.  When planning manually it is not uncommon for vehicles to be moving around empty, or without maximised loads.  When you automatically generate runs in PODFather our algorithms will work out the best way to get the job done, maximizing every mile on the road for a reliable result.

Control costs

Transport is one of the mostly costly resources within a business. So, it is a resource that must be treated with care.  Putting too few loads onto a vehicle will mean you are wasting mileage money.  Overpromising and under delivering will increase customer churn, which will have an impact on your bottom line.  So route planning impacts more than just distribution.  Getting routes right, and making sure vehicles are in the right place at the right time can have a big impact on your business cashflow. 

BRAEHEAD FOODS: Braehead Foods, one of Scotland’s largest independent food wholesalers, is working with PODFather to optimise routes and streamline proof of delivery processes across its UK wide operation.  With a fleet of 20 vehicles, and over 1,300 hotel and restaurant customers to serve, Braehead Foods needed a solution that could help modernise its manual transport planning process.  PODFather is now used daily to plan driver routes, track vehicle movements, and capture electronic proof of delivery in real time.  As a result, the Braehead Foods team is seeing huge benefit – in the form of significant reductions in mileage, driving time and fuel – which equate to a financial saving of over £80,000 a year.

Meet customer time windows with ease

As consumers we are all now very used to an Amazon-style delivery service where we know when our items are coming, with tight time slots now the norm.  Such expectations are spilling over into the b2b delivery environment where your end customers will be looking for suppliers that can provide delivery reliability.  With PODFather planning your routes you can make sure your routing results hit customer time window expectations and that your plans are also realistic. Arrive at the right time, all the time, with PODFather’s route optimisation solution. 

IG DOORS: “The customer service benefits of introducing PODFather have been significant.  With PODFather we can automatically issue ETA notifications to customers on the day before delivery, give them live status tracking on the day of delivery and issue electronic delivery confirmation immediately.  The number of customer service calls has fallen dramatically as our customers enjoy the benefit of having full visibility of when their delivery or service engineer is arriving.  It really has been a game changer for us.” James Toyer, IT Systems, IG Doors

No spreadsheets or paper tickets

One of the big benefits of introducing PODFather’s route optimisation solution is that you no longer have to plan using spreadsheets or share driver jobs using paper tickets.  Planning is faster and results are more reliable, and drivers download job information onto the PODFather app which runs on the most basic of smartphone device.  No paper has environmental implications with some of our customers saving several tons of paper each year.  Run paperless with PODFather and see how streamlined paper-free processes can improve operational performance and cashflow for your business. 

BAKO NORTHWESTERN: “The introduction of PODFather completely changed the way we work.  We used to manage everything using paper tickets which, with thousands of products and customers, was a hugely time intensive task.  We have now eradicated paper tickets from two of our three locations and look forward to doing this again at our third and final site early next year.” Richard Hodson, IT Manager, Bako North Western (Group) Limited

Share the planning role

Planning manually takes real skill, knowledge, and experience.  Without the proper experience and expertise route plans can quickly unravel.  With PODFather helping to create optimised routes the burden of planning can easily be shared.  The system is easy to use, training is provided, and results are reliable so there is no longer an issue when a manual planner takes vacation or leaves.  With PODFather you have the right tools in place to get the job done.

CLASSIC FINE FOODS: “The fact that PODFather offers so much functionality, in one easy to use cloud-based system, made it a very attractive proposition for us as it means we can roll it out swiftly across our depots, eradicate paper, and start reaping the benefit of improved planning practices in just a matter of weeks.” Dean Croft, Head of UK Logistics, Destiny Foods

Report and refine your processes

PODFather route optimisation system users get access to a suite of business performance reports as standard.  With information gathered in our back-office system, and via the driver app, when using PODFather you will have an accurate picture of the work that was planned and how it was executed on the day.  Not only do you get real time visibility of missed deliveries or delays, but you are able to take the information that PODFather gathers and use it to make informed business decision about future route planning process changes. 

LM-JV (Laing O’Rourke & J. Murphy, joint venture): “Traditional logistics management systems relied on spreadsheets and printed paper tickets. Our busy enabling works programme required real time tracking of deliveries, with the ability to report directly each day, without waiting for paperwork to be sent in. Through the automated planning, tracking and ePOD system from PODFather, we’ve been able to manage approximately 20 contractors over 60 sites of varying size and scope, receiving around 90 reports a day, six days a week.” Aaron Toon, Logistics Manager, LM-JV

Improve business cashflow

Historically, companies using paper tickets would have to wait for completed tickets to be returned, hoping that they are not lost or damaged, before they can be passed to accounts for scanning and payment processing.  This, for some of our clients, would have taken up to 7 days before PODFather came along.  With PODFather you get real time notification that a job has been completed and capturing electronic Proof of Delivery (ePOD) means that you can see exactly what was delivered, to whom and who signed for it, all in real time.  Invoices can be triggered faster, in some cases as soon as a delivery is made, and our customers see a huge improvement in the speed at which cash flows into their business. 

McCASKIE FARM SUPPLIES: “We can see exactly what service visits have been carried out by which engineer, and the real time element of the system means we get instant notification when a job has been completed which has transformed our invoicing process.” Neil Rettie, Director, McCaskie Ltd

Find out more about our route optimisation solution on the following pages:

• What we do – Route Optimisation
• Route Optimisation – How it works
• Route Optimisation – Features
• Multi drop route planning
• PODFather’s latest route planning software release.

You may also be interested in finding out about:

• Customer notifications
• Driver tracking
• Electronic proof of delivery (ePOD)