Page 12 - Logistics News - July August 2022

O P I N ION

deliveries. That’s why it’s time to start talking about On a more strategic level, full clarity and visibility into

visibility in terms of clarity and control. fulfilment strategies can help with understanding whether

there’s actual capacity to meet customer demand, so the
Visibility needs to be synonymous with clarity strategy can be optimised to ensure that assets are being
Imagine that you’re managing a host of deliveries deployed at full capacity. By the same token, when a partial
for a given day. What data do you need at what time or incomplete delivery has taken place, follow-up can
to achieve visibility? The obvious answer might be happen immediately. As a result, customers become more

that you need as much information as you can get, confident in the brand and are more willing to offer the

whenever you can get it. But this has its pitfalls. You chance to make things right
might be receiving a feed of everything from miles
driven to items delivered to the exact time and geo- Turning visibility into delivery success
stamps for each completed last-mile delivery, plus data With true visibility – up-to-the-minute data presented at
about driver application usage, idling, hours of service each stage of the delivery process – it’s easy to gain a clear
and a dozen other things. view of deliveries and take control over what’s happening in

the field. What that looks like in practice will be different for

To be sure, all of this information is important. different businesses, but there are a few best practices that

All of it needs to be collected in real time and made should work across the board.
available to the team as needed. But depending on how

that information is being presented, it’s easy to imagine Offer customers visibility into flawless deliveries.
getting completely overwhelmed by it, so much so that Again, order tracking and visibility don’t help customers

you actually have no idea what’s happening with your if the deliveries are going wildly off track. The goal is to
deliveries. provide visibility into a process that’s already working. This

way, you can build trust and improve confidence that the
Visibility isn’t just about having as much data as delivery will show up at the right time.
possible as quickly as possible. It’s about presenting that

data in such a way as to make it clear what’s actually Define visibility for each stage of the delivery
happening with deliveries. It’s important to be able to process. When it comes to managers and dispatchers
absorb information at a glance and quickly visualise on the day of delivery, visibility might mean a real-time
what’s going right versus what might require some dashboard that gives a bird’s eye view of every truck and
additional work to stay on track. route. For higher-ups, visibility might come in the form of
reports. Visibility before the day of delivery might mean
Using visibility for delivery control seamless integration between the warehouse management
With the right data at the right time, presented in a way system (WMS), point of sale (POS) and delivery-
that makes it easy to gain clarity into deliveries, it’s easy management systems. But at each stage, the right visibility
to turn that clarity into concrete actions. For instance, is needed for the right people and processes.
if you have live status reports coming in from drivers
for each stop on their routes, and those live updates are Centralise delivery data. Having the right data in the
checked against ETA promises to see whether you’re right place at the right time means centralising data into a
still on pace to deliver at the right time, and the control single solution, so that your delivery management platform,

tower or dashboard is designed to flag exceptions at a for instance, works as one source of truth for making
glance, you can spot problem deliveries without even informed decisions in a timely way.
trying. When you see that a truck is running late with a Use predictive insights. On the day of delivery,
L O GI S T I CS NEWS to let them know that the delivery won’t arrive at the this might mean utilising artificial intelligence to predict
particular delivery, you can proactively call the customer

original time. If the new time works for them, you get
ETAs based on the latest status updates, and doing the

points for transparency. If it doesn’t, you can start finding same to model the likely eff ects of any changes to the plan.
Ultimately, visibility should extend into the near future, so
a way to reroute the driver to the delivery site at a time

that actually works.
10 JULY/A U GU S T 2022 the right decision can be made with confidence. •
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