A Guide to Scheduling: Delivery Management Made Easy

No one wants to waste more time scheduling routes and to manage delivery operations in today’s world.  As a business leader, you would know how creating a shipping schedule is complicated, hard, and time-consuming as it involves stages like sales, operations, logistics, and the availability of drivers.

One of the many obstacles would be improper route planning which may slow down the entire delivery process. And another one would be failing to share a delivery schedule with your delivery team. These issues might be the result of a manual process that restricts you from sharing a delivery route plan in one go. 

After all, it’s you who needs to manage delivery routes with more than one stop before handing over them to drivers individually. To help you schedule routes hassles-free, here is the guide for delivery scheduling in which we will discuss challenges and solutions.

What is a Shipping Scheduling?

Shipping scheduling refers to the process of planning, organizing, and coordinating the delivery of goods and products. It involves managing various aspects of shipping, including routes, delivery times, and resources to ensure timely and efficient deliveries.

The process of finalizing how and where the purchase order will be delivered from the warehouse to the buyer’s location is referred to as the delivery schedule. It symbolizes the movement of the goods considering pick/pack time per delivery, routes, and availability of delivery vehicles. While scheduling deliveries, dispatch managers can offer flexibility regarding delivery timings as per the buyer’s consent. 

Moreover, effective delivery schedules should be reviewed in a timely manner as many buyers may prefer changes in later stages. Change in schedule delivery could be possible if the buyer needs more or less quantity of the delivery item. But, not all the changes would be fulfilled from the seller’s end. As a result, you need to frequently apply changes until the buyer’s needs are fulfilled.

What are the Benefits of Delivery Scheduling?

Businesses that make efficient delivery schedules are likely to have multiple benefits. Here is the list of benefits you get when the delivery schedule is drafted effectively.

1. Knowing delivery tactics

While creating a delivery schedule, you need to implement different strategies to run delivery operations smoothly. By doing so, you will learn about customer behavior and successful strategy which actually works for your business. Ultimately, you can understand delivery tactics to consider in the future and achieve your organizational goals.

2. Seamless order management

A properly drafted delivery schedule takes care of the supply chain management as it ensures the consumer demand is fulfilled. Also, if they opt for changes after placing the order, you can manage the things accordingly. Delivery scheduling practice minimizes late deliveries and makes sure you don’t miss out on any of them.

3. Dealing with contingencies

If you have a delivery schedule ready, it would be easier for you to deal with contingencies. In the delivery business, consumers would likely prefer different time zones or next-day delivery at the end moment. Such unexpected events are carefully handled with optimized scheduling of deliveries. Hence, you won’t have consequences post-delivery.

4. Desired business growth

Delivery schedules would prove to be a worthy asset as far as your business growth is concerned. The reason is if you plan routes for multiple deliveries in advance, you are likely to provide delivery service on time. This would help you take your business to the next level. Thus, your business would continue to grow gradually.

What are the Challenges Involved in Delivery Scheduling?

The biggest delivery challenges are managing the supply chain and driver schedules within your company. Here are a few:

1. Time-consuming shipping process

At the onset of your funnel, there are often multiple ways that clients can take orders. For instance, maybe they purchase on the website. Or maybe they have an account, and they purchase their goods or your solution via the internal group chat that you have, or maybe they use the phone to call to manage the site traffic.

The reason this delivery schedule is hard to make is the variety of means to orders. These lists need to be consolidated into a central list.

2. No flexibility

Stemming from the challenge in the point above, there are often multiple people involved in creating the shipping schedule. The person taking phone calls, the sales team to the person managing the shipment of goods, to the person dispatching the drivers and delivery vehicle.

3. Compact timeframes

Another issue is performing deliveries in compact timeframes using many tools used for the supply chain management. This is a common issue for many businesses experience while loading materials at each stop. If it continues on a daily basis, your delivery schedule is likely to get affected. Some may use documents or various software solutions and apps along the way.

4. Delay in route planning

Another great issue is the problems related to route planning and optimization. As mentioned in our article on route planning. Did you know that if you have 11 stops in a route, that makes 40 million different possibilities of routes? How can a human ever find the optimal way forward? It’s critical to use a route optimization solution to process the data to help drivers meet their delivery deadline.

What Elements are Needed to Plan a Scheduled Delivery Route?

• For planning the delivery schedule, you will need the right route optimization software which can assist you in creating routes considering road conditions.

• An online route planner takes minimum time to find optimized routes and assists you in performing maximum successful deliveries. 

• An in-built driver app that should alert your team before the start of the entire process. It directs the driver to collect the package from the hub and deliver it to the customer via the shortest route.

• Also, the delivery scheduling tool should be compatible with customer preferences so that you don’t have to worry about unexpected changes.

What are the key features of a Delivery Scheduling Software?

If you are looking forward to investing in delivery management software, make sure it must have below stated list of features.

1. Route optimization

The first step is planning delivery routes and their optimization. Therefore, your software should be easily able to find optimized routes. In fact, it should take minimal time to find the best routes.

2. Real-time customer alerts

During the delivery process, your customers should receive automated delivery notifications. It further helps the customer to make themselves available at the time of delivery. In addition, it will improve communication between delivery teams and offers exceptional customer service.

3. Auto-dispatch

When you have multiple scheduled deliveries, you are likely to have delays amid ongoing delivery operations if done manually. So, when you switch to management software for planning deliveries, make sure it automatically dispatches parcels with a single click.

4. Delivery reports

Advanced delivery scheduling software is not just limited to generating efficient schedules, it also stores delivery details in the cloud-based storage. Similarly, your preferred software should generate on-demand reports to analyze dispatchers’ and delivery agents’ performance.

How to Schedule Delivery Routes with the Upper Route Planner?

Upper’s delivery planner allows managing a delivery route plan including 500 stops which means you can easily schedule your deliveries in advance. Thereafter, you can share the route plan with the dispatcher and drivers via text or email notification. Even it allows you to make changes at the last moment in case your buyer requests you.

Here is how you can manage delivery schedules with Upper.

1. Generate route plan: Organize a route plan including as many as stops you want to add (upto 500).
2. Add drivers: List out the available drivers along with their shift timings.  
3. Set priority: Choose the priority of delivery whether it is crucial, high, or low.
4. Define service time: While scheduling deliveries, mention the approx. service time for your tradesman. 
5. Schedule routes in advance: Pick the time and date from the calendar on which you want to perform the delivery.

Why Upper is ideal for delivery organizations?

Using Upper Route Planner, you can schedule deliveries for months in advance and make last-minute changes. The online delivery route planner ensures your drivers don’t get stuck in the traffic. And therefore, it generates delivery routes considering the avoidance zones, diversions, and toll booths. 

It guides a delivery driver to complete last mile delivery as quickly as possible. Drivers can use the ‘Upper for driver’ app to check the delivery status, buyer’s details and capture the delivery proof. Even if the admin re-optimize routes, it automatically updates them on the driver’s end. Drivers can directly check instructions for delivery using the mobile app.

Moreover, Upper is equipped with all key features like route optimization, single-click dispatch, auto-assigning tasks, and timely delivery notifications. Hence, Upper would play a crucial role in scheduling deliveries. 

What are my cost savings by Upper Route Planner?

Upper can get you optimized routes which will help you perform faster deliveries no matter how many stops you need to cover. With Upper, you can bring down 10%-15% of total delivery costs. It is possible because Upper uses an automated delivery process that minimum financial support. 

Since Upper provides you with the best routes, your drivers only have less distance to cover. As a result, you would need fewer delivery fleets which ultimately reduces transportation and fuel costs. Such an automated delivery scheduling process requires less manual intervention and you can save a wholesome amount of money. 

Thus, it doesn’t affect your financial budget but helps you achieve desired business profit.

Choose Upper for Delivery Scheduling

Now, since you are aware of how delivery scheduling is significant to your business, we recommend using Upper’s delivery planning software. Upper can help you manage multiple deliveries by providing advanced technology features.

The delivery management software also directs delivery drivers to perform quicker deliveries with a dedicated driver app. Hence, Upper can resolve your delivery scheduling issues for a long time. Sign up with Upper and ease your delivery operation now.