Key Takeaways: It takes meticulous planning, including demand projections and growth prospects, to scale a delivery service. Efficiency may be increased and costs can be decreased with the help of effective communication and coordination with partners, such as suppliers and distributors. Offering more services, like same-day delivery or white glove services, might draw in new clients and boost sales. Businesses must stay current on market developments and client preferences as the delivery sector develops. There is a very thin line between “growing a business” and “scaling a business”. When you grow your business, you are increasing sales, revenue, the sales, and revenue and gaining customers. But, scaling your business means growing exponentially, and this is what makes your business sustainable. According to a report, eCommerce accounted for 8% of total retail purchases, which has now reached 20% due to high demand. Since the hit of the pandemic, people have chosen to make online purchases instead of going to the market physically. As demand for delivery services is growing, businesses find it difficult to meet customer demand. Deliveries can be time-consuming for many online retailers. Hence, they prefer to outsource their delivery process to third-party logistic companies. This is because they want to provide a better delivery experience to their customers. Therefore, you should avoid relying entirely on third-party service providers and focus on setting up your delivery ecosystem. In this blog, we will discuss how to scale your delivery business and deliver a quality customer experience. So, let’s find out. Table of Contents 9 Steps to Scale Your Delivery Business Why is it Important To Scale A Delivery Business? How Can an Upper Route Planner Help You Grow Your Delivery Business? FAQs Summary 9 Steps to Scale Your Delivery Business The primary goal of your delivery service should be reducing the cost per delivery to scale your delivery business at high demand locations. Increasing the route density can help you minimize the cost, but you need to streamline your business operations to ensure quality deliveries at scale. 1. Plan ahead of time Planning your delivery schedule and process is the first step for scaling your delivery business. It sets up a strong base for your delivery business to scale and grow in the competitive industry. The more precise and detailed your planning, the better the delivery operations. You can achieve a higher scalability number if you follow a thorough planning process. You need to decide how the shipments will arrive, be dispatched, and delivered. Finalize the vehicles, workforce, positions, technology, and multiple factors to set the delivery standards. You should schedule your deliveries to avoid troubles during the peak season or holidays. Early planning gives your in-house team a brief idea about their work schedule and the standards they need to maintain while ensuring the complete delivery process runs smoothly. 2. Set your priorities straight One of the underrated steps to ensure that you scale your delivery business is to prioritize your delivery orders to serve your customers efficiently and feasibly. Adjust your route planning based on the delivery time window for individual customers and instruct your drivers to follow an optimized and shortest path. You need to set the priorities right for your deliveries to ensure maximum workforce productivity and efficient scalability. But how to create an optimized path of multiple product delivery as Google Maps can only handle 10 delivery points simultaneously? You need to integrate robust route planning and optimization software to analyze your delivery route based on multiple delivery factors like traffic and weather conditions, delivery priority, and ETA. We’ll discuss more on this in the latter half of the article. 3. Hire a skilled and professional workforce Hiring a professional and dedicated workforce plays a vital role in the success and growth of your business. You need to ensure that you cater to the right talent at different positions in your delivery process. If you’re just starting your delivery process, you need professionals with some experience back in the delivery business. Hiring a fresher will increase your investment cost and time because you need to train them to handle the desired task. Create a professional on-boarding process that tests the applicant’s different skill sets and approaches in real-world scenarios. You can scale your business by having the right professional at the right place managing your delivery operations. Look out for the bright talent in fleet management, logistics, delivery driver, and other positions to streamline your last-mile delivery process. An experienced driver fleet enables your business to work productively and professionally. 4. Automate your delivery process Integrating automation in the delivery process can help you remove redundancies and human errors and optimize the delivery operations for scalability. You can provide your customers with a quality customer experience by sending them automated notifications and real-time visibility updates about their parcels. Automation can also help you enhance the communication between your in-house team as you can update or change your delivery process, and your team can instantly get an update about the change. Automation can help you break down the complexity of the delivery process and manage multi-order deliveries with finesse. You can scale your delivery business without investing funds for expanding your delivery network with the help of automation. But automation can only be achieved with the help of delivery management software that can help you increase the work rate and fulfill customer expectations. 5. Create your online footprint Without a solid online presence, you cannot reach your target audience like your competitors. With the surge in online shopping, customers want to access their mobile phones and place an order for the product they want. The global pandemic added fuel to the trend and forced retailers to switch to the online ecosystem to connect with their target audience. The eCommerce industry and internet usability will rise in the coming years, and your delivery business needs to create a solid online footprint. Being on the internet, you can compete with the big guns and meet the expected delivery demand of your customer. You can reach a more comprehensive online audience and expand your delivery business globally with a robust last-mile delivery ecosystem. 6. Invest in transportation Transportation is the lifeline of your delivery business; you need to invest wisely and make calculative decisions while selecting your transport network and best delivery vehicle. Depending upon your budget and industry, you need to select the delivery fleet capacity you require and invest in the most efficient vehicle to handle your delivery process. For example, if you run a furniture delivery business, you need a vehicle with a large load carrying capacity compared to a flower delivery business. You can even ask your delivery drivers to tell their suggestions before investing in a new fleet of delivery vehicles to run a successful delivery business. It will involve the delivery drivers, and they’ll feel like an essential member of your delivery operations, and it can promote a solid work culture in the organization. 7. Streamlined packaging and dispatching A robust logistic and dispatching process can help your delivery business to improve the quality and efficiency of your operations. You need to integrate a powerful logistic and dispatching software that can assign the delivery orders to the driver and vehicles in a streamlined manner. It can remove the errors in managing your warehouse inventory and misplaced delivery orders. Also, improve the packaging process and minimize the size and space of the delivery packages to maximize the delivery space in the vehicle. This helps the delivery driver to carry a larger quantity of products in a single shift and deliver maximum delivery orders. Focus on categorizing your products to simplify the dispatching process so that your employees need to search for the product in the warehouse and quickly place it in the dispatch line. 8. Invest in technological solutions Integrating new technologies and adapting to the changing industry ecosystem is very important for you to scale and remain a profitable business. With the rising demands and popularity of same-day delivery, you need advanced and robust technology to cut the delivery cost and deliver products quickly. Technologies like machine learning, robotics, and artificial intelligence are helping the last-mile delivery business optimize delivery routes, manage delivery expectations, and execute the best last-mile delivery strategy with finesse. You can also create backup and emergency plans with modern technologies to save your business from any unfortunate events. And the best technological solution you can integrate into your delivery business is route optimization and planning software. 9. Optimize route and delivery Optimizing a route is essential to get the best delivery route for your drivers and increase efficiency. It helps streamline the delivery process, cut operating costs, and maximize profits. A route optimization software can help you extract detailed insights into the delivery operation to get an overview of the performance of the workforce and vehicles. You can leverage the data and make well-informed decisions to turn your delivery workflow. A route planner can help you create an agile communication channel, and you get real-time information about the order processing. Sharing the information will help you improve the customer delivery experience and help you get a bird view of the operations. You can scale your delivery business to new heights by integrating robust route optimization and planning software. But there are a few selected tools that can assist you in scaling your delivery business and maintaining the promised quality of customers delivery. Don’t worry. We did the digging on your behalf and selected the best for your delivery business. Why is it Important to Scale a Delivery Business? With the increase in the online eCommerce market, customers want a quick and reliable delivery experience at their doorsteps. 61% of online retailers find their delivery inefficient; you can transform your business and stand out from the rest within a foolproof, flawless delivery process. The impact of the global pandemic has created a severe demand for a broader and ideal delivery model. If you are aware of the consumer behaviour there’s a huge opportunity that you can pounce on. If you want to strengthen your impact, you need to adapt to the changing consumer behaviour to scale your delivery business. But you need to follow result-orient scalability steps that can help you achieve your delivery business goals. How can an Upper Route Planner Help You Grow Your Delivery Business? We understand how important route planning is for your delivery service business. So, finding the right software play a crucial role in taking your business to the next level. Upper Route Planner is a robust route planning and optimization software. It can help you scale your delivery business and fulfill the changing customer delivery expectations. With Upper, you can handle different aspects of delivery operations from route planning to taking digital proof of delivery. The advanced routing feature helps you save 10 hours of your planning time. You can create a delivery route plan by adding stops manually or simply using the one-click import function. Plus, send automatic ETA notifications to customers for delivery updates. Get your 7-day free trial to know more about the features of Upper Route Planner. Enhance Your Business Productivity with Upper Let Upper help you scale your business with its advanced routing features and minimized operational costs. Analyze your team performance by analyzing on-demand reports. Try it Now FAQs Is the delivery business profitable? Yes, the delivery business is highly profitable. It simply needs the right growth strategies and tools to grow your business and make money. What are essential delivery businesses to start? Some of the delivery businesses that you can start are grocery delivery, meal-kit delivery, flower delivery, medicine delivery, alcohol delivery, courier services and many more. What are the issues in a delivery business? There are multiple challenges in a delivery business like the traditional supply chain system, relying on manual routing or Google Maps for deliveries, no automation, and no real-time tracking with an estimated time of arrival. How to attract customers for the delivery business? You can create a solid online presence and focus on powerful branding and marketing to attract a new-age client base for your online delivery business. Which is the best route planner software? There are multiple route planning and optimization software like RouteXL, Google Maps and many others in the market. But to find a better-packaged route planner for your business you can go for Upper Route Planner. It helps you to streamline your delivery operations and achieve a faster delivery rate in a cost-effective manner. Summary Small or large every businesses go through ups and downs as far as delivery service is concerend. Being a delivery company owner, you must ensure the best experience to avoid issues in customer satisfaction. If you are ready to start your delivery business, you can consider the above steps to make your entire business more profitable. By integrating with Upper Route Planner, you can optimize routes in a few seconds. The automated route planning process reduces the manual planning time and chances of error. This software helps several businesses to streamline deliveries to grow your business. You can book a demo now to explore more about Upper. Author Bio Rakesh Patel Rakesh Patel, author of two defining books on reverse geotagging, is a trusted authority in routing and logistics. His innovative solutions at Upper Route Planner have simplified logistics for businesses across the board. A thought leader in the field, Rakesh's insights are shaping the future of modern-day logistics, making him your go-to expert for all things route optimization. Read more. Share this post:
