Trick or Treat?

Halloween is coming and it means big business for many in the retail industry, but also huge logistical challenges.

According to Statisticbrain the total consumer spending on costumes, treats and festivities will reach $7,950 million in America this year. And WalesOnline claims that Halloween is now the UK’s third highest spending festival (£300m) placed behind only Christmas and Easter.

The trick is that as people are increasingly ordering online the one thing they all want to know is, “when will my order arrive?”

The problem for courier and delivery companies is that events, such as Halloween, drive gigantic surges in demand, placing them under considerable logistical pressure as they seek to manage the avalanche of work, maintain schedules and keep meeting narrow time windows.

The sheer volume of work makes it impossible for any planner or dispatcher to continually plan the most efficient use of vehicles in real time and so keeping customers’ informed and happy can become a nightmare. Customers’ expect to be proactively advised on when their order will arrive, or updated if there is any delay and trying to react to customer ETA queries is a time consuming and expensive manual process reliant on numerous phone calls.

The treat is that Maxoptra’s dynamic scheduling and route optimisation engine is designed to enable fast and efficient decision-making in real-time within ever-changing operational environments, to keep customers informed and deliver on time, thereby:

• Keeping customers informed. Once the day’s route is planned, each customer automatically receives an ETA notification and subsequent updates.
• Controlling Job Sequence. If the sequence changes for any reason then the system automatically recalculated the ETA’s
• Monitoring job status. Any delays are automatically monitored by the system so an accurate delivery status is always available in real time to update job sequences and ETA’s.
• Managing customer expectations. If a driver’s delivery sequence is disrupted by any delay, the system automatically recalculates the ETA for each job so the customer can be informed.

Maxoptra’s dynamic scheduling engine delivers operational efficiencies, cost savings, higher profitability and a great customer service – all treats without any trickery.

Order Maxoptra free trial now and enjoy all the benefits. Contact us and we will show you how Maxoptra can help.