How Dispatch Management Software Works? Key Benefits And Features

Dispatch management software makes scheduling a breeze. Its features, such as capacity analysis, carrier management, and route optimisation, help make dispatching much easier and faster.

With great investments comes greater ROI- said a great dispatcher.

Such wise words could only be said by a dispatcher who knows how demanding and competitive the last-mile logistics industry is. But all thanks to dispatch management software that is making sailing through easy.

Automated dispatch management plays a vital role in determining the success of delivery operations and businesses. It is responsible for coordinating and managing the movement of orders from one location to another. Planning, scheduling, monitoring, and assigning riders to the task/order are all part of the process.

Without much ado, let’s read how you, as a dispatcher, can breathe a sigh of relief when using a dispatch management system, which makes rider and order scheduling a breeze.

Let’s get started!

Factors Driving the Importance of Dispatch Management Software

If you, too, are pondering why companies are dedicating so much time and effort to streamlining dispatch management. Well, here are some of the reasons:

1. Surge in the Demand for Same-day Deliveries

In the United States, the use of same-day delivery grew between 2020 and 2021, with delivery times becoming a critical factor for success.

According to a statistic, in 2020, 24% of US online buyers chose same-day delivery services for orders from exclusively online retailers. By February 2021, the percentage had risen to 36%.

As a result, not only do more customers request same-day delivery services, but more businesses are offering them now than ever before. Therefore, to be competitive, you must be able to respond quickly.

Running a fast delivery business requires effective dispatch management software to ensure smooth and fast delivery operations, managed through efficient route planning, and order dispatching while reducing costs. Adding such software also allows businesses to accommodate ad-hoc orders without much effort.

2. High Customer Expectation

According to a study, more than 70% of shoppers identify convenience and free delivery as their top reasons for shopping online.

Consumers expect online orders to be dispatched and delivered to their doorstep as soon as possible. Yet, as the demand for online orders grows, the strains on package shipping and delivery companies increased.

The desire for same-day delivery cannot be emphasised; unfortunately, most businesses fall short of this expectation, with just slightly more than half (50%) offering same-day shipping.

There is a substantial disparity between this data and the fact that over 75% of consumers expect and want same-day shipping.

Another survey of more than 1,500 customers found that 98% agree that shipping affects brand loyalty and that 84% are reluctant to return after just one unpleasant customer experience.

There has been an increase of 34% since 2017.

As a result, if businesses want to retain customers, improve customer satisfaction, and thrive in the digital age, they cannot afford to make mistakes that slow down their dispatch process.

3. Lower Profit Margins in this Highly Competitive Industry

Your company offers the same goods and services that thousands of bigger businesses do. Furthermore, satisfying consumers and winning their favourable reviews can be difficult.

This fierce competition can greatly reduce your company’s market share and profit margins. Using all of your earnings for delivery operations would leave you with no penny to take away.

Fortunately, an advanced dispatch management software system can help you reduce delivery costs by streamlining the dispatching process and finding the most efficient routes. It will accomplish this by ensuring that you don’t need to hire more drivers and have fewer vehicles on the road.

4. Spike in Driver Attrition

According to sources, industry startups acknowledge that delivery driver attrition varies between 35 and 50 percent annually, creating a roadblock for the $1.5 billion online logistics industry.

Employee turnover (simply to replace them) can cost anywhere from 16 percent to 20 percent of their annual wages.

However, this does not include all of the indirect expenditures, such as:

• Ramp-up time
• Lost productivity
• Larger impact on the performance of your entire team

Most importantly, businesses frequently neglect how dissatisfied delivery drivers negatively affect their brand. For any delivery business, the fleet’s capacity is practically the image of the company and the only genuine face-to-face interaction their consumers have.

A robust dispatch management software helps address all the challenges your delivery business may face due to poor or over-allocation of tasks to a single driver or rider. It ensures that all the riders are optimally assigned orders and routes without feeling overburdened.

Additionally, the software assists you in identifying good drivers, rewarding or promoting them, and retaining them for as long as feasible. It also makes your drivers’ tasks easier and more satisfying. This is accomplished by software’s rich algorithms that know how to optimise timeframes and ensure balanced workloads automatedly.

Dispatch Management Software to the Rescue

💡 ABC Logistics.Ltd has been offering last-mile delivery services to many brands and companies for a very long time. So far, it has been doing a good job expanding its services and clientage, resulting in more profits and greater market value. However, with expansion comes more orders to deliver and fulfil, more clientage and consumers to serve, and a larger workforce to manage. The need to optimise its dispatch operation is more pressing than ever, not to mention the rising competition in the market. So Mr. Rajpal, owner of ABC Logistics. Ltd decided to do what every person does: Google the solution to their problem. The answer was dispatch management software.

A dispatch management software is a logistics solution that provides rapid automation to maximise dispatch operations. It offers several features and advantages that help dispatch operations efficiently and on schedule.

This solution allows dispatchers to reduce the time wasted in manually planning and carrying out dispatch operations. The optimal allocation of resources and routes results in enhanced efficiency, maximising the productivity of on-ground resources. Managers can easily collaborate with available on-ground resources and make well-informed decisions about the vehicle size requirements and the order of deliveries.

It increases operational effectiveness and allows dispatchers and drivers to communicate promptly, eventually improving delivery performance and lowering shipping costs.

What are the Core Features of Dispatch Software?

TrackoMile’s dispatch management software is ideal as it offers all the core features supporting optimisations and automation of the dispatch process.

Capacity Analysis and Order Scheduling

The software analyses the business’s capacity and the availability of resources to complete orders before assigning them to the riders. It auto-allocates orders to the right resources and even reschedules orders in case there is a shortage of human resources.

Carrier/Load Management

The software’s load or carrier management feature makes assigning orders to the right vehicles easy based on size, capacity, and load restraints. It even lets you set parameters such as a maximum number of items per vehicle, weight, and volume depending on the size of the vehicles. This helps optimise carrier utilisation.

Route Optimisation with Muli-stop Sequencing

TrackoMile leverages advanced algorithms and analytics to optimise routes so as to suggest the shortest and most efficient route for delivery. It does so after considering 120+ factors, such as:

• Traffic conditions
• Driver availability
• Delivery time window
• Nature of the order

Also, unlike other delivery software, it lets you effortlessly plan more than 100 stops in the route to support multi-stop delivery. It lets you effortlessly arrange or sequence the stops as per delivery priority in the most optimised manner, helping to reduce delivery time, fuel consumption, and driver TAT.

Rider Roster

Automated dispatch management software provides a comprehensive view of the available drivers and vehicles and their shift schedules in the rider roaster feature. This makes scheduling riders even easier, as dispatchers do not have to call to know the driver’s bandwidth, proximity, or availability.

Rider App

The rider app provides all the important details regarding delivery riders job, tasks assigned, schedules, orders, best-suited routes, customer details, and important instructions. The app entails a chatbox where riders can effortlessly communicate queries or confusion with managers. The app also has a feature to mark rider’s attendance and collect POD.

Real-time Order Tracking

This feature is vital to ensure complete visibility of the dispatching process. The dispatchers can have a bird’s eye view of every dispatching process over a centralised dashboard. They can view which order is in progress, total riders available to take the order, ETAs, and track delivery vehicles in real-time.  Monitoring dispatch activities also lets you stay informed about each stage of the delivery process, allowing you to anticipate problems and take proactive measures to resolve them.

Also, ETA can be shared with consumers to help them stay informed of the time and date of delivery. This also helps to reduce missed deliveries.

Reports and Analytics

With the software,  it’s easy to get detailed insights into the on-ground analytics in seconds. These reports provide an accurate idea of

• Number of stops completed by riders
• Missed deliveries or stops
• Rider performance
• Cost of deliveries

This level of visibility into day-to-day delivery helps to determine the reason for missed deliveries and also helps reduce second-attempt deliveries. Such quick analysis helps spot inefficiencies and take preventive measures promptly.

What are the Benefits of Using Dispatch Management Software?

For delivery companies, the right dispatch system software offers a number of benefits. This system can increase delivery management’s efficiency and cost-effectiveness by automating routing, dispatching, and tracking. For your consideration, the following is a list of some of the main benefits of using this kind of software:

Operational Efficiency

By automating repetitive processes like scheduling and delivery assignments, dispatch software lowers the possibility of human error. It frees up your team to focus on more important duties like enhancing customer service. It also provides real-time information so your team can promptly fix problems. The software reduces travel times through fast dispatching and route optimisation, enabling drivers to complete more deliveries on a given day.

Greater Cost Saving

Well-planned and optimised routes can help you lower fuel costs and save drivers time. Here’s how it works:

Effective dispatch management software increases efficiency by helping plan the most effective and optimal routes and reducing unnecessary costs. The fastest routes result in drivers spending less travel time, resulting in lower fuel consumption.

With the powerful auto-dispatch feature of the software, dispatch managers can establish rules to automatically assign deliveries to hundreds of drivers at quick intervals.

Delivery drivers are dispatched with clear instructions about cost-saving delivery routes which help save on fuel bills and other operational costs.

Automated Driver Scheduling

Driver scheduling headaches become a thing of the past. Instead of letting you manually arrange and rearrange schedules to ensure you meet those all-important delivery windows, the software does the heavy lifting for you.

The software schedules drivers by factoring in 50+ conditions, such as drivers’ skills, proximity, availability in the delivery region, etc.

Businesses can optimally assign riders without under or over-utilising them. This lets you ensure all the riders are rationally assigned to meet any scheduled or impromptu delivery requirement. This means your drivers can stay focused on delivering those packages while you rest easy knowing that your business is consistently meeting or improving on those delivery time promises.

Real-time visibility on drivers’ activity and delivery statuses makes things easier to monitor and allows dispatchers to see the bigger picture.

Enhanced Customer Satisfaction

Dispatch software offers real-time visibility into the progress of delivery. This software provides your customers with access to all the information, including

• Time of shipping the order
• Locations of distribution centres and local hubs the order passes through
• Estimated time of arrival
• Changes in the delivery (if any)

Sending all these updates via text or email reduces the need for frequent calls to customer service. This greater control and visibility into field operations through dispatch software empowers your customers and increases their satisfaction and loyalty.

Improved Accountability and Transparency

Dispatch management software enhances accountability and transparency in last-mile delivery through real-time tracking, proof of delivery features, and automated customer notifications. By optimizing routes and providing performance metrics, it ensures efficient and timely deliveries while holding drivers accountable for their performance.

This transparency reduces disputes and enhances customer satisfaction by keeping them informed throughout delivery. Overall, dispatch management software fosters trust and reliability in last-mile delivery operations.

Data-driven Decision-making

A scheduling and dispatch app helps comprehensively retrospect the workforce and operational activities, shaping the path for well-informed decision-making. Monitoring the process’s current state and anticipating potential scheduling changes aids in redirecting the riders.

Ongoing updates via real-time tracking status reports contribute to operational transparency. Thus, you can use the system to instil a sense of commitment in riders regarding their work.

You can obtain important insights from a centralised database and use that information to make timely and precise scheduling decisions. By utilising the system’s analytics features, you can quickly gain real-time insight into:

• Current number of technicians working in the field
• Overtime status (hours, number of shits, reasons for overtime)
• Available technicians who can be utilized to address unexpected requests
• Shifts that are suffered due to understaffing/overstaffing
• Attendance (presence/absence)

Improves Operational Performance through Reporting and Analytics

A dispatch software solution lets you access delivery related data in comprehensive formats like customisable dashboards, reports, and charts.

It also allows you to define:

• Financial metrics such as average cost per stop, mile, or quantity delivered.
• Efficiency metrics such as completed/missed deliveries, idling time, out-of-route miles, vehicle capacity utilisation, and net promoter score (NPS).

Assessing your delivery or service performance against these metrics can help you identify your areas of excellence and where improvements are necessary. Based on these real-time insights, you can take measures to fine-tune your dispatch strategy.

How does Dispatch Software Work?

Imagine your whole team of drivers waiting to receive orders at the dispatch centre. Back in the day (before software systems), someone had to manually figure out which driver was best suited for each order.

But with just a few clicks, the dispatch system takes in all the incoming orders and factors in things like driver availability, proximity, and capacity. In no time, it assigns a suitable driver to each order, like a matchmaker for deliveries.

Moreover, drivers get real-time updates straight to their app, so they have clear instructions on their destinations and schedules. There’s no need for back-and-forth calls and confusion — it’s all about efficiency, convenience, and satisfied riders.

Ready to Optimise Delivery with a Smarter Dispatch Plan?

For a logistics company, an efficient dispatch process is non-negotiable. With good dispatch management software, businesses can make the entire delivery process easier and seamless from beginning to end. This will automatically translate into increased efficiency, happier customers, satisfied riders, and increased profit margins.

TrackoMile’s dispatch management solution can help with:

• Seamless order assigning to riders automatically.
• Route optimisation and optimum carrier management.
• Detailed real-time reports on operational analytics.
• Real-time order and rider updates for dispatchers and consumers.

The software is a sure-shot way of scaling operations and helping to deliver orders on time.

Schedule a demo today!

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is the dispatch process?

  The dispatch process allocates productive activities by distributing orders and pertinent instructions at pre-arranged times and in the order of operations shown in route optimisation sheets and loading schedules.

• How to be a good dispatch manager?

  A good dispatch manager readily adapts to technology like dispatch management software. They should be well-versed in the latest technology, resourceful, and know how to streamline workflow.

• What is the purpose of dispatch?

  The primary duties of sending a dispatch are determining priority, making sure everything is in order, giving instructions, and overseeing the process to optimise resource utilisation and cut expenses.

• What are the challenges of dispatch management?

  A dispatcher faces a lot of challenges while scheduling orders and riders.
  - Driver unavailability or shortage to fulfill demands
  - Uncontrollable operational costs
  - Lack of visibility of the delivery phase
  - Incomplete or complex information and data
  - High customer expectations and demands