How To Map Multiple Locations
To efficiently map multiple locations, you need to make sure that your customers’ shipping addresses are visited in the most optimal sequence. Moreover, you need to account for customer time windows, vehicle capacity, and hundreds of other variables and routing business rules.
Therefore, planning multi stop routes for delivery in the most time and cost-efficient way is almost impossible without route planning software. With Route4Me’s most used route planning software in the world in 2024, you need to follow only 4 easy steps to map multiple addresses:
Table of Contents
1. Import Delivery Addresses & Map Multiple Locations
The first step when routing multiple locations with the Route4Me Route Planner is to upload spreadsheets with addresses or drop pins on a map and use them as route stops. Furthermore, a multi stop route planner will enable you to import customers’ routing data from your devices, the cloud, your CRM system, or eCommerce platform.
2. Specify Route Parameters and Business Routing Rules
Next, set up optimization constraints and business rules such as delivery time windows, fleet vehicle capacity, traffic jams, weather conditions, revenue per route, etc. During this step, you will also want to specify the number of available drivers, the number of routes you want to plan, and other optimization parameters. By doing so, you’ll have more control over the route planning outcome so it will be tailored to your business needs.
3. Sequence Driving Directions After You Map Multiple Locations
After specifying your routing parameters, the route planner will map multiple locations and create optimized routes with optimal visitation sequences for your delivery drivers. Instead of trying to solve this complex problem manually, you can plan optimized routes with multiple stops and customer shipping or delivery addresses in minutes instead of hours. At this stage, all of your customer locations are ordered in the most time-efficient and cost-effective way so that your drivers can spend fewer hours behind the wheel. This reduces the need for overtime and minimizes fuel and payroll-related expenses.
4. Navigate Multi Stop Routes Using Mobile GPS Navigation
The last step in mapping multiple locations is navigating the planned multi stop routes. For a seamless and continuous process – from route planning to delivery – your drivers can use the in-app GPS navigation inside the route planner Android or iOS app. Alternatively, your delivery drivers can get driving directions from other iOS or Android GPS navigation apps for the routes planned on the route planner.
When choosing to use third-party navigation apps – such as Google Maps, Waze, Apple Maps, etc. – you might not get the most of your optimized routes since not all of these apps account for weather conditions, traffic jams, roadworks, and other unpredictable obstacles that your drivers might come across.
