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Last Mile Delivery (LMD) which is the last leg of the supply chain has become crucial part of business, specially for Logistics, ecommerce and retail. In the omni-channel supply chain, e-commerce transactions result in very large volumes of small orders – that have to be delivered direct to the consumers.
Last Mile Delivery accounts for more than 35% of the total delivery cost. Adding to this., LMD acts as the only point-of-contact between the buyer and the seller. It completes the buying process and is the biggest contributor of customer satisfaction.
LMD plays a major role in operations w.r.t cost, time and customer satisfaction.Economies of scale, finely tuned operational efficiencies and advanced technologies are the key factors that lead to success in last mile delivery.
The local last-mile issues:
With the increase of start-ups that operate on time-bound delivery and with the increase in same day delivery by the ecommerce giants; companies are focusing on clearing their last mile challenges. The challenges of Hyperlocal deliveries are as follows:
- Small deliveries to many places causes complex routing problems.
- Deliveries are time-bound and are restricted to time periods and certain routes.
- Due to the dispersed customer location, it is difficult for the delivery guys to find the customer location
On a broader level., impact of inefficient Last Mile Delivery leads to slow response rate, low customer satisfaction, inefficient service, low retention levels and therefore affects the overall profitability. With last mile delivery playing a crucial role in directly impacting productivity, revenues and customer experience companies have to focus on using efficient delivery management softwares that help in increasing the work better.
Companies operating in logistics industry face some unique challenges as delivery guys operate in vast territories and their representatives are distributed in many different locations. The challenges these companies face include:
- Lack of real-time coordination
- Ineffective technology application
- Run sheet creation
- Admin work
- Locating customer addresses
- Visibility of field workforce
- Handling Ad-hoc requests
To solve the above challenges, mobility has emerged as a key strategic as well as tactical solution that solves these issues for an organization. To give the customers the last smile through the last mile, it is important that the companies reach out to the customer quickly and efficiently. To drive the last-mile efficiently and to bring a smile on the customer, it is important that enterprises mobilize their day-to-day operations and data.
How Mobility is impacting Last Mile Delivery?
Mobile, connected lifestyles will generally engender expectations about the ability to readily interact with all facets of work and personal life from a given connected device. This will be true for all constituents of IT, whether they are employees, consumers, business customers, or other external business relations. The effect will amplify over time as mobile-first generations join and influence the workforce.
Mobility Solutions helps in increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of operations by helping organizations to schedule jobs, track execution and evaluate the performance, all in real time. Real time coordination with mobile workforce, task automation, constant job updates, tracking workers, identification of best worker to perform a task, reduction in manual work, analytical reports, smarter decision making are among few benefits that mobility solutions can give to the organisation.
Adding to it., mobile solutions are directly increasing the productivity and revenues of the organisations. With the automation of the processes & field workforce, the number of jobs per field workforce will increase and so the overall productivity and the revenues. Hence., mobility acts as a game-changer for the Logistics companies.
About the Author:
Sri Varshini Kolavennu is takes care of Digital Marketing & Strategy at FarEye. FarEye, is a Mobile Workforce Management Platform. It is a customizable Enterprise Mobility Platform., that automates processes and field workforce thus., helping the enterprises in delighting their customers. Currently., more than 5million transaction s are done on their platform.