One of the geography issues that most logistics software was not designed to address is in Australia. There are truly large distances between big centres, regional points may be hours apart, and differences in state rules, such as state public holidays, road restrictions, maximum loads on some council roads, introduce variables of planning that foreign sites silently disregard. A delivery operation that is based in the delivery across Western Australia is not facing the same logistical reality as a courier fleet in the Netherlands. Using the identical generic tools yields mediocre outcomes. You can click here for more info.
The use of route optimisation software developed with Australian conditions in mind is a solution to a different problem as compared to offshore counterparts. It not only chronicles space geographically. It takes into consideration the things that literally destroy Australian runs, such as the fact that regional falls are separated by enormous distances, the state-related holiday schedules, the state of outback roads that rules out some types of vehicles altogether. Manually balancing those variables in 6am with pressure on a dispatcher and drivers waiting, that is where the mistakes add up to wasted fuel, lost windows and late finishes. The software eliminates that one point of human error but does not eliminate the dispatcher. It only provides them with something better to work with.
The case is fast growing financially. The saving in the headline is fuel and the fuel costs in Australia make it a significant saving. Fleets that switch to optimised routing have also been found to save 12-20 percent of fuel expenditure in the first few months of switching to manual planning. More than that, the overtime expenses are reduced because the runs are turned in earlier. The rate of failed delivery is reduced, and this is important since the cost of the failed delivery is the reattempt, the call to the customer, and, in other cases, the account. A Queensland based distributor has been quoted as having recovered their yearly software bill in less than three months through the combination of fuel and overtime savings.
Live visibility alters the management of the spread-out fleets by the Australian dispatchers. Seeing each vehicle onscreen, losing a run behind on a customer window, rerouting around a last minute highway closure without calling four different drivers – operationally strong over large areas. An all-encompassing fleet that spans metro Sydney and regional NSW cannot be successfully operated by gut feeling and regular visits. The information layer that good route optimisation software offers transforms reactive management into what is more of a semblance of actual control.
