With eCommerce continuing to grow rapidly, optimising your retailer delivery services has never been more critical, however, understanding the relationship between your locations, distribution network and customers has traditionally demanded vast amounts of time, energy and investment.
Location intelligence software has fundamentally changed this as it enables you to gain a macro-perspective of your locations and distribution network on demand. This enables you to derive valuable insights that will both improve and streamline your retailer delivery services.
Adapt your locations to optimise retailer delivery services
These are the primary reasons you should prioritise enhancing your retailer delivery services with location intelligence:
Save money: Put simply, the further your goods have to travel and the more time they spend on the road, the more their delivery will cost you. Ensuring your distribution network provides broad coverage with centres positioned close to major customer hubs will help you cut the cost of each delivery.
Satisfy customers: Customers expect fast, cheap (preferably free) retailer delivery services. Making your delivery services quicker and more convenient will improve your customer experience and retention rate, therefore earning additional revenue for your company.
How to optimise your locations: the basics
Advanced location intelligence systems such as Periscope® give you a wealth of options when it comes to optimising your retailer delivery services.
Here are just some of the ways you can use this software to better position your delivery resources:
Understand customers
With location intelligence, you can find out:
- Which customer demographics most regularly use your delivery services
- Where these customers are based and in what concentration
- What products they typically order
- When/how frequently they make an order
- What the value of these orders are
With this insight, you can ensure your delivery services are accessible to all customers, and decide where to focus your resources to maximise profitability.
Calculate distances and drive times
Using your own corporate, secure version of Google Maps, you can visualise all relevant factors on a single platform, including:
- Your locations/distribution centre locations
- Your customer locations
- Major transport routes and interchanges
- Then, using Periscope®, you can instantly estimate drive times from distribution centres to specific customer locations.
- Based on this data, you can ensure your distribution centres are positioned close to areas with high delivery rates and you can also identify any areas where delivery costs are proportionately higher and decide what action to take.
Streamline delivery resources
With so many delivery models to choose from, you need location intelligence to help you identify which options are most applicable.
These are some of the decisions location intelligence enables you to make:
- Whether to make deliveries from stores or open distribution centres in specific locations
- What specialist equipment you will require to serve each market (e.g. trucks with refrigeration function/capacity for large loads)
- Which routes to choose to undertake the maximum number of deliveries per mile/journey
- How to administer customer returns cost-effectively (via post, home pickup or drop off in-store/at a dedicated collection point)
- Developing your understanding in these areas allows you to invest in processes and resources that could increase profitability, while cutting those that are too costly.
Make efficiency savings and improve your customers’ experience by optimising your company’s delivery services with location intelligence.
Discover how Periscope® can enhance your insight gathering processes by signing up for a quick demo.