How to Optimize Your Small Business Delivery Services

Optimize your Deliveries

You have successfully curated a business plan and set up to launch your own small business, say, food delivery or grocery delivery business. Now, customer experience and convenience top the list when it comes to the growth of your small business. And as the owner of a ‘delivery business”, your goal should be to make the delivery process fast and smooth for a better customer experience.

As your customer base grows, the delivery process becomes complex. And will you rely on a third party for your delivery operations or choose the efficient way of using delivery management and route-optimization software?

Small businesses all across the world have used route-optimization software to perform all of these things and more.

What does delivery optimization mean?

Customer expectations evolve at a rapid pace, often faster than we can comprehend. These differences in tastes might harm your business if not catered to in time, and cause you to lose customers.

Businesses should aim at optimizing their deliveries by leveraging the latest technology, route planning, control over costs, and automating a few processes for smoother functioning.

Working on these factors is motivated by a desire to improve the customer experience (CX). Customers are willing to spend more for a superior customer experience 90 percent of the time. Not only that, but 20% of the company's revenues originate from present customers, accounting for 80% of profits.

Challenges faced by small businesses in terms of delivery

Working with more than 7000 brands throughout the world has taught us a lot about the local delivery optimization problems that small businesses face. Companies of all sizes are under enormous pressure to compete with the two-day delivery standard of big players like Amazon and consumers' increased expectations for fast delivery.

Customers expect businesses to give delivery, and if they can't obtain their items quickly enough or at a reasonable price, they'll go elsewhere. According to the reports, 77% of consumers are willing to pay higher for expedited delivery. Apart from this, 58% say that when purchasing online, it's crucial to be able to see what's available for same-day delivery.

It might be difficult to live up to these lofty expectations. Small businesses risk digging themselves a hole in order to catch up.
Especially if a business is planning deliveries manually or through a third-party service.

• - Manual planning takes a long time, and this inefficiency makes growing a business difficult when orders grow.
• - Fuel expenses and delivery vehicle wear & tear.
• - Customers who are not at home when drivers attempt to deliver items are all factors that might increase delivery costs.

It's a lot to keep track of.

Delivery options available to small businesses

Before choosing a solution, it is important to consider all of the potential consequences, as your business could end up paying a high price in the long run.
As a small business owner, you will either

• - Hire a third-party delivery service, or
• - Employ a third-party shipping company, ot
• - Have your own efficient delivery system

It's virtually hard to know what your consumers want and execute their preferences if you don't understand them. Here are some disadvantages of hiring a third-party delivery service:

• - You lose access to consumer data when you outsource delivery to a third-party provider. You may use this information to improve your products or adapt your services to increase sales.
• - Using a third-party delivery service will cost you control over your customer experience.
• - Commission fees can range from 10% to 30% for on-demand delivery services like Postmates and Uber Eats. Third-party delivery services aren't cost-effective, and they frequently favor major corporations over local businesses and restaurants.

And, if you hire a third-party shipping company:

• - Companies like FedEx, UPS, etc have their own set of packaging restrictions.
• - The cost of shipping is also partially dependent on how cost-efficiently you pack your products. If your packaging costs are high, then your shipping costs are likely to be high too.

Whatever form of third-party delivery service you choose, you need to ask yourself the following questions:

• - How certain are you that the courier service you've chosen will provide a positive customer experience?
• - Are you sure your courier will deliver fragile items securely so that they arrive intact?
• - Is it worth losing customer data if you outsource your delivery process?

If you don't know the answers to any of these questions, outsourcing deliveries to a third-party shipping/delivery company is certainly not the best solution for you.

Now, let’s explore the third option that you can opt for your small business delivery management. Having your own optimized delivery system.

Employing route-optimization software, you may improve your small business's in-house delivery process while still using the same trucks, vans, and drivers.

Tookan has assisted hundreds of brands in streamlining their package delivery processes, increasing income, reducing delivery times, scaling effectively, and maintaining control over their customer experience. Our customer service staff is also ready to assist you in getting up and running as fast as possible.

Tookan optimizes your present delivery method to make it more efficient. Tookan will be able to compute the most effective delivery routes for hundreds of orders in a matter of seconds, factoring in different driver and vehicle restrictions, up to five weeks ahead of time. Our route-optimization software speeds up planning by an average of eight times, allowing logistics and fleet managers to devote more time to strategy.

Here are a few more processes that small businesses need to consider in order to optimize their delivery processes

Fleet scheduling & management:

Fleet scheduling software assists in the management, control, analysis, and optimization of daily delivery activities. These systems feed off data, which they evaluate in real-time to generate intelligent ideas and recommendations for delivery optimization.

Optimizing/Reducing fuel consumption:

A three-tier technique to lower overall cost is facilitated by a fleet scheduling system. It offers information on the fleet's running time as well as the stops made along the way. You can prevent unwanted stoppages and halt that increased fuel consumption using this information.

Improved driver performance:

The program will read and visualize the idle time and runtime of the vehicles, providing you with a more accurate statistic with which to optimize delivery operations and make modifications. The dispatcher's role is reduced when fleet management and scheduling systems are used, and an algorithm is in charge of providing the instructions together with optimum routes that lead to on-time arrival.

Shorten the turnaround time for delivery

Small businesses must cater to the changing needs of their customers and optimize their deliveries in order to deliver faster. A poor delivery experience is bad for everybody in the supply chain. This includes delivering food, parcel, medicine, etc. to customers who have ordered them directly from a brand. It also means you lose one customer, which leads to a loss of sales and profits.

A short introduction to Tookan

In addition to Tookan handling delivery processes, increasing income, and reducing delivery times, it gives you access to top-of-the-line delivery optimization features, such as:

Geofencing: Define the delivery area for each delivery agent, guaranteeing that they are able to meet the delivery needs of a specified region in order to reduce turnaround time.

Automated tasks: Tookan allows you to design rules for repeating processes, allowing you to spend more time working on complicated systems.

Route optimization: Use Tookan to take advantage of pre-optimized navigation routes for on-time delivery.

Capacity management: Tookan's capacity management feature allows you to arrange deliveries based on the agent's capacity and the number of deliveries to reduce delivery agent burnout.

Seamless integrations: Adapt the primary Tookan interface to your own needs by integrating extra utility applications.

Increased Productivity: Tookan allows you to read and visualize optimum delivery efficiency insights. These conclusions are based on the driver's performance, customer feedback, and other factors.

Maintenance Alerts: By sending notifications regarding the state of the monitored vehicle parts and whether they need repair, Tookan streamlines maintenance duties and lowers expenses. As a result, the possibilities of a sudden vehicle failure are reduced.

Behavior Monitoring: By identifying fleet behavior in real-time for concerns like idle time, shared driving, rash driving, and other difficulties, it will be simpler to develop mitigation remedies and build instruction manuals for drivers based on their actions.

Take your customer experience to the next level with Tookan

The consumer is at the heart of any company. Customer happiness is critical to the success of any business, whether it's an e-commerce store selling items, a local service, or just an experience. Tookan helps small businesses achieve new levels of customer satisfaction.

Route optimization software not only improves on-time delivery and lowers operating expenses, but also allows businesses to go the additional mile in whichever way they choose.

If you don’t believe us, hear it from Subway & Dominos itself. Check out how Tookan has helped these businesses reduce their delivery times & optimize daily operational challenges.

Try Tookan today

Are you looking for the most cost-effective solution to sending huge packages? Or perhaps the most effective method of delivering small/medium-sized packages or any other on-demand delivery business us-case? Tookan can assist with any delivery requirements.

Do you want to learn more about how Tookan can assist your company? Begin with a free 14-day trial today. Our customer support is ready to assist you in getting started and altering settings to meet the needs of your organization.