What are the most important capabilities of the best routing software?

First, is the ability to model real-world conditions and constraints such as road networks, vehicle types, customer and product-specific handling, planning policies and practices. The closer the route planning model represents the physical world and operating constraints, the more accurate and feasible the results will be.

Second, is the ability to support complex business goals and execute multiple planning scenarios. Most companies have balanced approaches to their customer service, cost and productivity goals and they can be quite sophisticated. In addition, businesses are not static, and companies want to compare the different outcomes of planning approaches to determine which strategy best achieves their goals.

Third, the ability to automate the planning process and autocorrect when needed. Planning is not as simple as “pressing a button”. The best planners have multi-step planning processes and if these are automated, all planners will perform as the best planner.

Fourth, auto correction of stop times, driving speeds, driver performance, etc. is important to help keep planning models accurate and reflect real-world changes.

Fifth is the ability to provide operational dashboards, comprehensive reporting and analytics. Operational dashboards and reporting are critical in helping to ensure that today and near-term objectives are achieved.

Sixth and finally, is product architecture and usability. The demands of today’s businesses operating in real-time means that the route planning software has to be able to solve complex problems quickly.

Algorithms and data management for example have to be designed from the ground up to scale. Usability is critical for rapid adoption and planner’s ability to get the most value from the solution. The route planning solution should have a combination of intuitiveness and the ability to model complex problems and optimization goals in a straight-forward way.

Routing software can reduce operational costs in a number of ways. Route planning software with optimization can reduce the distance (e.g. miles) driven per stop.

Not only does this mean lower fuel costs, but it can reduce vehicle maintenance costs. Another benefit of distance reduction is increased productivity which can lead to fewer vehicles, drivers or overtime pay.

Automated route planning can reduce the number of planners required as the building of routes occurs without manual intervention and only requires limited review before use. Route planning software can be used as part of a dynamic delivery appointment scheduling solution to steer customers to select delivery appointment times that require lower distance and hence lower costs.

Routing software improves the customer experience in several dimensions. Route planning software helps ensure that routes are feasible which means more reliable delivery execution.

Route planning software can more accurately predict delivery time which allows for tighter time windows enabling customers to better manage their time. Instead of an all-day window, customers can be provided much more precise windows such as an hour.

Route planning software can improve the customer experience when it is used as part of a dynamic delivery appointment scheduling solution which allows customers to select their delivery appointment during the buying process.