How Delivery Automation Software Helps In Reducing GHG Emissions
We’re in an age where anything can be ordered online. Be it furniture or food or medicine or apparel, for that matter, even a car or a toothpick! And brands are waking up to this imminent reality where not just delivering products at the doorstep, there are expectations around flexibility in delivery time windows and also easy processes for returning items. The global last mile delivery market is on course to hit $200bn by 2027 from its current size of $110bn. In such a situation, it is only apt to be thinking about the repercussions on the environment.
Last mile deliveries have several challenges like failing to deliver on the first attempt and packaging considerations. There are several inefficiencies that come into play which lead to more distance traveled which results in higher fuel consumption. This number might look small for one order, but when the number of orders runs into billions, the impact is unimaginable. A quarter of a mile of extra distance traveled by a delivery rider to home deliver an item would translate to billions of extra miles overall. And this of course results in additional tons of GHG emissions.
In such a case, where a brand has no choice but to deliver on the consumer expectations, automation presents a solution where technology is used to optimise routes and plan trips. This results in lesser distance travelled, savings on fuel, reduced cost of delivery, and an improved experience for the end customer. This is the promise of a delivery automation software.
Key features of a routing software
Digital Processes
Retail companies or fast-food restaurant chains take orders through multiple channels- via their own website, mobile app, marketplaces, or third-party aggregator. A comprehensive delivery management software will enable the brand to take all these orders into a single screen and have complete visibility over the supply chain. Digitisation gives a chance for the operations team to optimise the manner in which the orders are processed and delivered.
Trip Planning through route optimisation
Once the orders are taken in on a single dashboard, AI and ML powered algorithms come into effect. Routing software is trained over billions of location data points along with other variables. All this location and historical intelligence is used to optimise the routes and form trips through which hundreds of orders can be delivered efficiently within the limited delivery resources available.
Dynamic Order Batching
Consider that you have ordered a burger from McDonalds in a particular mall and a friend of yours who lives next door has ordered a sandwich from Subway in the same mall. Now, in a typical use case, there will be two delivery drivers fetching the orders and respectively delivering. But imagine a situation where the delivery automation software can club these two orders intelligently and assign it to the same delivery driver! This basically doubles the efficiency and reduces the carbon footprint into half.
Optimal Utilisation of Capacity
Another huge area of optimisation is in the field of using capacity appropriately. Imagine a truck moving from one part of the country to another delivering goods. In a typical use case, a transporter would have limited information and on the basis of that he or she would try and optimise the capacity of the vehicles. But if the transporter is using or is present on a network of carriers then the platform will be able to club multiple orders together and give a full truck load to every transporter. This is an even larger use case for reducing the carbon footprint on the environment by using technology.
Conclusion
Logistics is the backbone of global commerce and it is full of inefficiencies. There are several areas where manual work and lack of visibility leads to delays and extra trips which results in more distance travelled and wastage of fuel. On a global scale, the impact on the environment is immense. In such a scenario, the potential to optimise is equally large and brands can play a huge role in reducing GHG emissions by adopting delivery automation software. Using automation for logistics is an easy and must step for brands in order to fulfill their responsibility towards the customers and the environment.
(About the author: Dhruvil Sanghvi is the CEO of LogiNext)
