Courier Management System
What Is Courier Management?
Courier management is the process of organizing last-mile delivery operations. Courier management involves scheduling order deliveries and assigning them to couriers, overseeing operations, planning and optimizing routes, overseeing vehicles, managing fuel, and handling courier expense approvals.
The 3 Objectives of Courier Management
There are three main objectives of courier management:
Deliver products to customers.
Support the couriers delivering those products.
Ensure that customers have a great buying experience, so they come back for more.
It sounds simple, but each goal comes with its own set of challenges. Deliveries are time-sensitive, and products can be fragile. Couriers will face obstacles in the field, including traffic, difficulty locating addresses, and customers who aren’t home. And your customers expect frequent updates. It’s a lot to juggle, whether you’re a seasoned professional or just starting a courier business. The best way to reach these objectives is to break each one down into simpler tasks. We’ve done this for you below.
Deliver products quickly and efficiently
The success of your delivery business hinges on getting orders to customers on time and undamaged. The faster and more efficiently you execute deliveries, the higher your earning potential. This is what it means to deliver products quickly and efficiently:
Transport products safely. Courier management teams aren’t typically responsible for packaging goods, but they do need to make sure products are protected during transport. Depending on what you’re transporting, you may need insulated bags for food storage, cushioned packaging for breakable goods, or tall dividers for flower deliveries.
Consistently meet or surpass due dates and times. More than half of online shoppers say delivery turnaround time defines a positive experience, and 89% of consumers report ditching a brand because of poor customer experience. You need to optimize delivery routes, assign deliveries in priority order, and take every step you can to maximize your delivery speed if you want to have a high level of customer satisfaction.
Drive efficiently. Manual calculations are prone to human error and take longer than using software. Give yourself a competitive advantage by relying on courier route optimization software to calculate the most efficient routes in seconds.
Consider implementing fuel-management strategies, too. You can cut fuel costs and increase your overall efficiency simply by maintaining delivery vehicles and teaching couriers fuel-efficient driving techniques.
Maximize work capacity by supporting couriers
When a customer shops online, couriers are the only brand representative customers meet. Couriers are arguably your most valuable asset, so it makes sense to support them any way you can. Here’s how you can enable couriers to perform their best and, in turn, drive revenue for your company using a route optimization tool like OptimoRoute:
Give couriers clear routing instructions that are easy to follow. Otherwise, delivery drivers will spend a lot of time sitting in their car, entering each new address into their GPS instead of driving to their next destination. Use the OptimoRoute Driver App (Available on Android and iOS) to provide drivers with turn-by-turn navigation from their preferred mapping app. This will make the whole delivery process more efficient, which can lead to more deliveries per day—and more money for you.
Give couriers advance notice about shifts. Minimize last-minute no-shows by giving workers their schedules as far in advance as possible. With OptimoRoute, you can schedule as far as 5 weeks in advance. The more notice you give couriers, the easier it is for them to find coverage, and the less likely they are to “call in sick” the morning of their shift. Check out our guide on shift work scheduling for more on this.
Schedule driver breaks appropriately. Driver breaks aren’t a luxury; they’re a legal right, and you can run into a lot of issues if you don’t proactively schedule them. OptimoRoute helps you schedule breaks automatically to have the least impact on delivery routes.
Motivate couriers with clear goals and company purpose. Numerous publications have documented the correlation between a positive company culture and worker productivity. Set clear goals, and support your employees so they achieve them.
If your couriers are underperforming, the best way to find a solution and figure out how you can help them is to simply ask. Couriers may be facing challenges in the field that you aren’t aware of. Schedule regular one-on-one check-ins with each member of your team, and you’ll gain valuable insight into ways you can better support their efforts and improve overall workflow.
Why You Need a Courier Management System
You need a courier delivery management system because without one, you won’t be competitive. A courier delivery management system, or CMS, is business software that simplifies courier management and routing. A CMS streamlines all of the following tasks:
Planning and optimizing delivery routes
Courier tracking and scheduling
Analyzing courier performance
Package tracking during delivery service
Updating customers
Manual planning and routing are time-consuming processes. It’s hard to isolate the optimal route across cities with thousands of different roads. It’s nearly impossible to do this well when you need to calculate hundreds or thousands of stops. This is known as the traveling salesman problem—and it’s what courier management systems set out to solve.
OptimoRoute: An Advanced Software Solution
At OptimoRoute, we set out not only to solve the traveling salesman problem but to give businesses of all sizes access to advanced tools—features you can use to not only plan routes but also plan five weeks in advance. Not only update your customers but also give them a live tracking link, so they can see where their courier is in real-time. These are just some of the many things you can do with OptimoRoute courier management software:
Replan routes and send them to drivers’ phones even when they’re already in the field.
Spot when additional couriers need to be scheduled or hired to meet order demand—up to five weeks in advance.
Seamlessly schedule drivers’ breaks.
Input unique vehicle capacities for your fleet.
Schedule drivers to return to a depot to reload without having to start a new route.
Balance routes for the lowest cost, even up distribution among drivers, or both.
Provide your customers with real-time tracking and live ETAs that show the minute their order will arrive.
Customize your customer notifications.