Most courier operations don’t ultimately fail because of terrible drivers or dysfunctional routes. It’s the nondescript, seemingly innocuous paperwork that slowly eats away at your profit margins until there’s nothing left. The transition to a digital system isn’t and shouldn’t be thought of as an upgrade, it’s a calculated financial decision – the more swiftly you come to terms with that, the better.
The real cost of paper-based operations
Misplaced documentation, and processes that make it hard to access the documentation you do have, will hurt. We know your shipping manifests, or delivery notes, are business-critical documents. They’re the connection between the promised service and what actually happened. Being unable to locate them is one thing; not being able to start creating them until all orders are finalised is a painful consequence of how many companies still operate.
Attempting to piece together records for orders that were completed days or weeks ago, because each order wasn’t dispatched with a complete and signed manifest, is a hidden and unnecessary cost.
When printed manifests are sent on the truck with the driver, they’re at risk of being lost, destroyed, photocopied, or tampered with. If the double-entry system doesn’t match up, and you need to establish which batch of manual records is incorrect, good luck.
Audit your hardware and connectivity before you buy anything
Before you decide on which to go for, take stock of what your drivers are actually carrying. Do they have personal phones that can run a delivery app? Is your cellular coverage reliable across the routes you operate? A digital workflow that loses sync in a dead zone and doesn’t queue data properly will frustrate drivers and erode confidence in the transition before it has a chance to work.
You have two main device paths: BYOD (bring your own device), which is lower cost upfront but introduces inconsistency, or company-issued devices, which cost more but give you control over the hardware environment. For operations running perishables, hazmat, or high-value freight, rugged devices are worth the recurring investment. For lighter parcel runs, BYOD with a clear minimum spec requirement is usually sufficient.
Choose a platform built for courier operations
Off-the-shelf logistics packages are generic, so they don’t account for the requirements of your relationship as a dispatcher with your mobile driving workforce. Choosing a purpose-built courier management software solution will ensure the fast, efficient planning performance makes the life of the driver easier, automatically set itineraries fitting their availability and work zone, and provide the fastest feedback loop imaginable when a delivery is complete.
The latest systems are all SaaS-based, meaning your office doesn’t need to host a server and updates are regularly deployed with no interruption to your services. Make sure you select a platform that can be connected via an API as you begin to integrate your dispatch software into your existing e-commerce or warehouse management systems. We all know how frustrating and expensive it can be to get a vendor to write an integration for you, assuming it’s even possible with their system.
Roll out in phases, not all at once
The quickest way to sow operational chaos is to go live all-digital on all drivers simultaneously. Instead go live in parallel on a single route or all at once on the tech-comfortable drivers. Give that two to three weeks, fix the simple things, and understand the issues that really matter versus the ones you convinced yourself would be problems.
In this same timeframe, you can run the digitization process against any “old” paper still being used in day-to-day operations. Bills of lading that are still recorded only in paper form need to be introduced to your document phase before the digital work on them can be fully integrated. Your OCR tools can do batch scanning pretty easily if you can determine it’s worth saving some of the old records.
After the pilot drivers stand up stable, begin adopting route by route. Don’t rush that, but don’t dawdle on it to hit an arbitrary deadline either.
Handle driver resistance before it becomes a problem
Resistance from drivers towards the implementation of digital solutions in their daily work is a common reaction. In most cases, it’s not the technology they are rejecting, it’s the underlying assumptions of control or productivity that come with it. They assume that managers will use the technology to oversee them, or that the tools will simply make them work more. Prove them wrong. Show them how the solutions work, or will work for them, rather than for you.
Read: How to boost your business with Adspower
Connect delivery completion to invoicing automatically
Once a digital manifest is completed, it should trigger an invoice. Not the next day, not after a manager sends a thumbs-up to billing – immediately. When your proof of delivery data is automatically sent to your financial system through an API, your billing cycle could drop from days or weeks to minutes.
That speedup appears in cash flow (one of the main challenges to a small or expanding carrier), resolution of disputes, and the time your office staff wastes requesting missing documents and scanning paperwork that’s already stacked up somewhere safe.
This is the real reason we all want to go paperless. We want to get paid faster, resolve disputes by simply sending the proof, and give our dispatcher a whole lot of information so they can correctly dispatch. Paper can’t do that, a good digital system can, and the switch is a lot more manageable than you might think if it’s done right.