Route Optimization: Growing Necessity

Route Optimization – this keyword has been the buzz since last year. Its the process of extracting the most optimal path from one point to another. People often get confused with 2 terms – 1) optimal path 2)shortest path. Not every optimal path needs to be the shortest path and vice-versa. In the 21st century, Route Optimization has become one of the most important factors for the growth of various businesses especially businesses that are into logistics and field services.

Prediction of the optimized route plan depends upon various factors like the location of customers, selection of vehicles, etc. Apart from this, it’s hard for businesses to identify the exact geographic location. This cannot be achieved just by looking into a CRM or a CSV sheet.

This is where Route Optimization Softwares come into the picture. They allow hassle-free route planning and sharing with a single click. This, in turn, enhances productivity, reduces cost and improves the time efficiency of businesses.

Important aspects regarding Route Optimization:

1) Vehicle-Based Optimization

No matter whether it’s a two-wheeler or four-wheeler, Route Optimization Software maps a route and optimizes the fleet based on the type of vehicle taking the vehicle’s volume, speed, and efficiency into account.

2) Detection of exact geographic Location

Route Optimizations software can convert the typical textual address into a mapping point on a map and vice-versa. Apart from this, some specific RO software acquires the functionality of mapping ambiguous addresses into distinctive points.

3) Data Inspection

Data Inspection has to be done concerning 3 domains:

a) Riders

b) Customers

c) Time of the Day

From Rider’s domain, we could information about his skills, expertise in delivery, a preferred region of work, etc. From the Customer’s domain, we could get insights about the preferred time slots, any specific instructions, etc. From the Time domain, we could get an idea about the traffic status of a particular region, working or closing hours of any building or any organization, etc. RO Software posses the functionality of learning from previous performances and business reports to automate the route planning.

4) Analytics and Reports

RO Software also provides the ability to monitor and manually manage routes. It provides a distinct analytical report of the actual routes vs the planned routes. Through Analytics we can also keep a check on different business hubs.

5) Dynamic Route Modification

RO software can adjust last-minute orders, available vehicles or replan stop sequence automatically. In short, we could coin this as “Re-Routing”.

WRAP UP:

With Route Optimization becoming a genuine necessity for virtually every business operation and routing requirements of companies becoming complex, it becomes imperative that organizations choose their Route Optimization software with utmost care.

Mappr – a product of JUNGLEWORKS is such an RO software that could meet up the current business demands. It has an edge over other existing RO software because it has the ability to plan routes intelligently to improve delivery efficiency and reduce operational costs.