Create efficient routes to save time and money

Distributors face multiple challenges every day – high volume of customer orders to organise, rising fuel costs, drivers and vehicles to manage, changing road and traffic conditions, and tight time windows. These scenarios combine and create an overwhelming situation.

Market Motion’s expert route analysis utilising Omnitracs’ next gen technology will take all of these challenges into account and works to find the best possible route plan to reach a fleet’s business goals each day. Fleets with optimised routes often save time and money while providing better service to their customers.

Reducing transportation costs

Driving fewer kilometres means less fuel and reduced wear and tear on vehicles

Improve customer service

Ensure all of your customers receive their customer on time and in correct time windows

Better resource utilisation

Add more stops to your routes and reduce overtime or even reduce a vehicle

Increase driver safety

Ensure drivers are compliant with working hours and reduce dwell time

Determining the best type of route optimisation for your business

Before deciding exactly how your business can benefit from route optimisation, it helps to know the difference between two primary routing methods – standard and dynamic.

Standard routing is a key solution for customer service. Each route will have a specific set of stops in a specific orders, guaranteeing that your customers will always have their product delivered at a specified time, often by the same driver.

Dynamic routing is on the other end of the spectrum and is best if your business’ main goal is cutting costs. Customers lose the predictability of standard routing, but you reduce miles and improve efficiency.

A route optimisation solution helps find a happy medium between these methods to not only please customers, but also improve your bottom line.

Routing methods guide

The two main tyes of routing – standard vs dynamic each have their pros and cons.
Which is the best for your business?

Download

Roadnet Anywhere daily route planning

The post What is route optimisation? appeared first on Market Motion.

Several factors contribute to additional time on the road for drivers and therefore impact productivity which in turn affects the efficiency and effectiveness of your operations. These include:

• driver not having the correct or missing delivery information,
• driver dwell time, detention and other delays,
• mechanical delays and breakdowns,
• navigation to the shipper/receiver,
• loading of the truck/vehicle,
• ease of parking.

Driver not having the correct or missing delivery information

It is of utmost importance that you send your driver on the road with all of the information required to deliver to the receiver. This includes the correct address and the correct location to deliver at that address. Sending a driver to the front of a business when the delivery dock is at the back of the building can cause major disruption, particularly in a CBD when it could take considerable time on one ways streets to get to the correct location. Ensure you have addresses geocoded to the correct location can increase route plan accuracy and help reduce unplanned overtime and missed time windows.

Dwell time

Another major factor eating away at time and efficiency is dwell time. Dwell time is time spent in the same position, area, stage of a process. For example, when a driver is caught in heavy traffic or waiting at a dock. An FMCSA study* in 2018 revealed that a 15-minute increase in the average dwell time increases the average expected crash rate by 6.2%. The logic is that drivers who have been detained may drive while fatigued or try to make up lost time and income with unsafe driving practices. Another possible factor that could increase the crash rate is driver frustration.

There are also astronomical costs attributed to dwell time. According to Jack Levis, UPS’s director of process management, one minute per UPS driver per day over a year adds up to $14.5 million while one minute of idle per driver is worth $500,000 of fuel at the end of the year.

Mechanical delays and breakdowns

No one can sustain a business if their equipment is breaking down. If a truck breaks down on the road, there is time lost waiting for a mechanic or worse getting towed back to base and transferring the load to a different truck, if there is one available. So ensuring trucks have correct maintenance and using technology to monitor engine diagnostics is a beneficial way to keep your fleet on the road.

Navigation to shipper/receiver

Don’t rely on consumer level maps for your drivers to navigate to their destination. To ensure your drivers are on the most efficient route, you need to be using enterprise level maps. Enterprise map providers keep all of the data current. That means navigating on roads that really do exist, including new roads that have just opened up — and road names must be accurate to keep drivers from getting lost. We know a lost driver is a distracted driver. More importantly, a distracted driver is a dangerous driver. Additionally, enterprise maps will have the most up-to-date traffic information, so drivers will spend less time stuck in traffic if the routes navigate to a less busy road.

Loading of truck/vehicle

Just how efficiently and carefully your merchandise is organised and loaded into vehicles can make all the difference between time, profit and loss. Managing a growing range of incompatible container shapes and sizes, along with various vehicle types and sudden schedule changes, you can quickly find yourself tied up with one crisis after another. A truck driver loses time when merchandise is not loaded in order delivery from last order first to first order last. This saves considerable time on the road for the driver who needs to locate each parcel or box. Additionally, it’s important that the driver then keeps to the plan, so there are no issues with the order of the load in the truck.

Parking

What happens when a driver can’t find a park at a delivery point? They are inconvenienced and need to spend extra time scrambling to find one of a limited number of spots in a specific area to park while dropping off a delivery. This eats up time and contributes to driver frustration which can have a knock-on effect on driver safety. Using technology that stores information on parking in a specific area can be of great benefit.

There are a number of things that can affect time and the efficiency of your operations.

Contact Market Motion today if you want to know what you can do to assess time in more detail and solutions to improve the efficiency of your operations.

* Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration in the USA.

The post How focusing on time can increase the efficiency of your delivery operations appeared first on Market Motion.

Omnitracs will integrate Blue Dot’s modern, cloud-native MilesAhead platform and product suite into Omnitracs One – the new, unified platform will offer the industry a solution with an unparalleled ability to improve the productivity, safety, flexibility, and scalability of overall fleet operations through seamless unified workflow experiences that feature modern user interfaces, visual presentation layers, and a high level of workflow configurability.

“To serve the growing need of our customers to adapt to a rapidly changing industry we are continuously focused on driving innovation throughout the transportation industry,” said Ray Greer, CEO of Omnitracs. “Blue Dot is known for its best-in-class, cloud-native technologies, modern user-centric interfaces, and configurability that allows the ability to quickly map to the unique needs of differing fleets. We’re excited to welcome Blue Dot and their skilled team of experienced employees to the Omnitracs family to further underscore our continued industry leadership and shared commitment to our customers.”

Developed as an integrated platform that trucking, transportation, and field service organisations can use to digitally transform their business, the MilesAhead platform and products add capabilities to the Omnitracs portfolio including:

• A modern driver workflow application that significantly improves the driver’s quality of life
• A modern back-office application that manages and enables rapid configurability of actionable workflows for fleet operations best practices
• A data analytics engine that brings the “connected” to fleet operations and provides unimaginable insights into your assets, drivers, and operations
• A centralized administration and management portal that offers unlimited configurability and control for unified workflow solutions

By integrating the MilesAhead platform and products into Omnitracs One, drivers will be given a streamlined mobile user interface that will be highly intuitive, eliminate steps and wasted time spent on reporting. Through this acquisition, Omnitracs will set the pace for next-level driver satisfaction by easing the exhaustive administrative burden continually being placed on drivers.

“Uniting MilesAhead with Omnitracs, the standard bearer of transportation technology, is the ideal outcome for our organization. With MilesAhead, we are at the forefront of transportation innovation, enabling drivers, driver-managers, and other back-office personnel to simplify their daily jobs and improve operational processes, leading to increased corporate financial performance and improved driver retention, recruitment, training, safety, and job satisfaction,” said Michael Sklansky, CEO of Blue Dot Solutions. “We are unique in our approach to aggregating transportation data and insights and placing this information in the right hands, at the right time, with sufficient context – facilitating edge computing. By joining forces with Omnitracs, our team is well-positioned to help accelerate innovation in the transportation technology ecosystem.”

Contact Market Motion to find out how MilesAhead could save time by improving your driver workflow.

The post Omnitracs acquires Blue Dot Solutions, dramatically increases focus on driver workflow and back office usability of fleet management software appeared first on Market Motion.

The real question you should be asking yourself is, can my fleet run properly without it?

Imagine this scenario. You are coaching your son’s junior AFL team. You work hard to teach them the fundamentals, coach them, and give them the ability to play the game. On game day, the kids are ready, the field is set, and it’s time to play ball. Then, you walk into the concession stand and lock yourself in the storage cupboard since you know the kids are ready and you trust their ability and desire to win will result in a victory… of course, no coach would ever do that. A good coach needs to be involved in the game, giving instructions, changing plays, and engaging his players. But many fleet managers don’t do this.

Yes, most of us do go into the field and engage with drivers, and often managers and drivers exchange many phone calls throughout the day to solve problems, but these interactions will never show you the game as it’s happening. That’s where having a robust fleet telematics system comes into play.

A new tech solution to old fleet management problems

Every day, you send out a fleet of expensive vehicles filled with expensive products to your customers as safely and efficiently as you can. You hope nothing goes wrong, but surprises happen.

Service delays, traffic congestion, and accidents all impact performance. Most importantly, customer expectations are not met when your daily plan goes wrong. The data you need to make decisions is limited and arrives too late to impact events in a meaningful way.

What you need is real-time data.

Stay in the game with real-time analytics

Fleet telematics provides real-time data that helps you understand vehicle usage and create programs to keep expenses at a minimum when surprises happen. It also helps you on a micro-level, like reducing idling and improving vehicle maintenance programs.

The value for vehicle-centric improvements is clear, but that is only half of the opportunity. The ability to use telematics to immediately impact driver behaviour is another important aspect. Often, adding telematics will automatically reduce mileage as drivers becomes aware their days are being tracked. Drivers are more likely to stay on their route and are generally safer when they know somebody is watching. Telematics acts as your eyes to manage your fleet and people in real time.

How Roadnet Telematics can help you

Roadnet Telematics provides higher situational awareness by letting managers know where every driver and vehicle is in real time. You can use this data to understand and change behaviours to root out unnecessary costs.

The telemetry data provides evidence to understand what really happened after a service failure, accident, or off-route event. Without telematics, investigating and resolving these issues is tough because there is little information available. With telematics, all the data you need is there. The right data helps protect you and your team from unsafe behaviour, false legal claims, and unjustified expenses.

Real-time, analytical data is one of the driving benefits of fleet telematics. Having this data enables you to:

• improve management of fleet resources
• reduce fleet fuel costs by reducing vehicle idling
• capture useful information for proactive maintenance
• reduce fleet costs by making your vehicles last longer through safety and maintenance improvement
• validate reported safe driving incidents

But you won’t need to stay in the office to watch the information pouring in. Instead of forcing your managers to collect data and analyse reports, Roadnet Telematics gives you the right information when you need it so you can focus on execution. With this data, you can monitor multiple driver activities to develop protocols and policies for improving key metrics. Performance data can be used to identify opportunities to reduce fleet operating costs and track performance against your new policies.

Tracking KPIs that matter

Capturing fleet management key performance indicators is crucial. Without it, you lack the data you need to make informed decisions that impact your bottom line.

Roadnet Telematics is powered by GPS, allowing managers to locate stolen vehicles, track vehicles 24 hours a day and know immediately when there is unauthorised vehicle usage. GPS tracking improves daily route adherence, routing metrics, and the routing process (such as service times and geocode validations).

Now you can capture actual arrival, departure, and driving times, which let you optimise departure based on traffic congestion, delivery windows, and frequency of visits.

Roadnet also empowers you to save fuel by ensuring that routes are optimised and scheduled routes match actual activity. Telematics data helps you do this by integrating this information into your routing process.

Can you afford to function without it?

Let Roadnet Telematics be your catalyst for change. Given the competition of operating a fleet in today’s world, the question isn’t why don’t you have telematics — it’s how can you function without it?

Roadnet Telematics makes sure your efficiency programs are executed intelligently. It helps every company have the most cost-effective operation, giving you the data to make the right decisions, rapidly drive out bad performance, and track your vehicles in real-time. Be aware or beware.

Call Market Motion on 1300 558 381 to get started with Roadnet Telematics today!

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