How To Deliver Faster Using Smart Route Planning Software

To deliver faster, businesses need to sequence customer addresses in the most time- and cost-efficient order. This requires accounting for variables like driver schedules, vehicle capacity, delivery time windows, and customer preferences. With advanced route planning software such as the Route4Me Route Planner, you can automate route sequencing and create efficient last-mile routes in minutes. This guide shows how to streamline delivery planning and boost routing efficiency with Route4Me.

Learn how to plan and optimize faster delivery routes using address grouping, the right optimization type, and custom routing constraints.

 

Table of Contents

 

1. Map Multiple Delivery Addresses

Start by importing customer delivery addresses into your route planning software. Addresses can be uploaded from spreadsheets, cloud storage, CRM systems, eCommerce platforms, and more. Once imported, view all delivery locations as pins on an interactive map.

Next, organize your service areas by drawing map zones or territories. Grouping addresses by zone helps prevent long back-and-forth trips, enabling your drivers to deliver faster.

Split addresses into territories or service areas to plan optimal DSD routes for multiple drivers.

 

2. Select The Best Route Optimization Type

Choose the optimization type that fits your operation. For single-driver deliveries, plan routes with multiple stops efficiently. For larger fleets, split hundreds of thousands of addresses into the most optimal number of routes based on driver and vehicle availability. The Route4Me Route Planner supports multi driver, multi depot, single driver, and single depot routing, ensuring your routes are optimized for speed and efficiency.

DSD route planning - optimize best sequenced Direct Store Delivery routes for multiple drivers.

 

3. Apply Routing Business Rules And Constraints

Tailor your routes by applying route constraints such as time windows, vehicle capacity (cubic volume, weight, number of pieces), and delivery priorities. Factoring in these business rules ensures that your routes are realistic and optimized, helping your team deliver faster while maintaining service quality.

Direct Store Delivery route planning with business routing rules and customer and fleet variables.

 

4. Dispatch & Navigate Optimized Routes To Deliver Faster

Finally, dispatch routes to drivers and navigate with in-app, voice-guided directions for iOS or Android. This allows drivers to focus on the road and follow the most efficient sequence of stops. While other GPS apps can be used, only the route planner ensures your optimized routes account for current weather conditions, closed roads, traffic jams, and other factors that affect delivery speed.

Dispatch routes to drivers.

 

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About author: Alex Yasko

Alex Yasko is the Go-to-Market Product Manager and Information Architecture Manager at Route4Me. With thousands of hours of experience, Alex specializes in breaking down complex last-mile optimization and routing scenarios into simple, actionable instructions, helping last-mile businesses streamline their operations effortlessly.

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Route4Me

About Route4Me

Route4Me has over 40,000 customers globally. Route4Me's Android and iPhone mobile apps have been downloaded over 2 million times since 2009. Extremely easy-to-use, Route4Me's apps create optimized routes, synchronize routes to mobile devices, enable communication with drivers and customers, offer turn-by-turn directions, delivery confirmation, and more. Behind the scenes, Route4Me's operational optimization platform combines high-performance algorithms with data science, machine learning, and big data to plan, optimize, and analyze routes of almost any size in real-time.