Our recent research found that almost one in ten people have been put off online shopping this year because of past problems with delivery. New research this week has shown that two thirds of UK shoppers don’t trust retailers to deliver their gifts before the big day. The remarkable thing is that despite this pessimism, almost half of consumers surveyed intended to shop at the last minute.

So what can eCommerce owners do in order to appeal to those last minute shoppers and reassure them about delivery?

Given the fact that half of shoppers will be making last-minute purchases with relatively low expectations, it’s important to prominently promote your Christmas delivery schedule.

John Lewis’ homepage, for example, has a link to their Christmas delivery page. Information about delivery is clear and transparent:

The rise of click-and-collect

You could also stretch the last date for buying by not only promoting online sales, but also in-store collection. The idea of mixed-mode buying is set to increase this year with the likes of Argos, Tesco, and Marks and Spencer jumping on board. And with good reason. Our latest research indicates consumers expect to see “click-and-collect,” the option to pay online and shop in-store. Allowing your customers to shop right up to the last minute is a great way to maximise sales and give your business that edge against your competitors.

Obviously all retailers can do is to ensure that orders arrive on time for their customers. Of course, this means placing all trust in the hands of the delivery team. But even with a reliable courier in place, the weather, or postal strikes can always throw a spanner into the works. Last year saw some of the worst snow the UK has seen for many years, leaving shoppers faced with uncertainty as to whether or not their presents would arrive in time, if at all.

Whether gifts will actually arrive in time for the big day is the main concern for all your customers. Providing consumers with timed delivery slots is one way to avoid these hassles. Shoppers may have to take the day off work or make special arrangements for someone to wait for an item to arrive. Providing delivery slots allows customers to allocate a time that is convenient to them. Offering delivery windows dramatically improves the level of customer service you can offer as a business. It’s not only a competitive advantage: it’s the kind of service consumers expect when ordering online.

Fundamental mistakes

It is easy to focus on driving website traffic to increase sales, but it is still paramount to deliver products quickly, economically and accurately. People are more comfortable now than they ever have been with the idea of ordering online. However, it’s surprising to see so many businesses that are still making fundamental mistakes within their website functionality and delivery capabilities that are hindering sales.

Retailers cannot take anything for granted this year – one bad experience can tarnish your business forever. In the end, when Santa doesn’t arrive on Christmas day it isn’t the couriers that get the blame, it’s the retailer.

Check List

• Highlight your delivery options clearly on your website
• Keep on top of stock levels and only promise what you can realistically deliver
• Ensure your customer-facing website reflects what’s happening in the warehouse or stockroom
• Provide consumers with timed delivery slots to arrange a delivery convenient to them

More and more e-tailers are trying to make shopping more convenient for their cash-and-time-strapped customers. Aurora, the umbrella company of fashion stores Oasis, Warehouse and Coast, claim they now deliver clothes in under 90 minutes.

And they aren’t the only ones to follow this shift; many companies, including ASOS and John Lewis, offer same-day delivery. Ecommerce websites are shifting their focus onto the delivery process as a critical way to improve customer retention. Companies now face constant pressure to manage their mobile work forces to be more competitive, productive and to achieve overhead reductions. As a result, freight directors constantly need to consider more innovative route planning and optimising tools.

With effective dynamic scheduling algorithms, companies can handle these complex delivery demands while significantly reducing their overall costs. The inevitability of change throughout the course of a day dictates route re-prioritisation at a moment’s notice. Dynamic scheduling achieves levels of responsiveness that aren’t simply possible with a fixed schedule: it’s a living document that will keep running until your project has been completed.

A static schedule might initially represent a good model of the timeline and costs, but in a fast-changing environment it will quickly decay. Manually updating scheduling systems is labour-intensive, open to mistakes, and won’t make the most of resources. Priorities can change at the drop of a hat, and as they do, companies need to have clear visibility of the location, availability and statuses, in order to make immediate decisions.

Route optimisation tools will quickly work out an initial schedule based on the list of deliveries and vehicles, taking into account factors such as timeslot preferences and vehicle capacities. Then, throughout the day, it’s possible to integrate real-time information with the system, such as additional waypoints or depot stops, while your drivers are still on the road.

The system can be set up to monitor the progress of drivers, letting the business (and its customers) know exactly where they are and when they currently plan to arrive at future waypoints, taking any delays on the route into account. The route can be tweaked automatically, for example inserting a waypoint into the most efficient place in the remainder of the route; or it can be tweaked manually, removing or adding waypoints into positions of your choosing. Whether you wish to add another delivery, stock-up at the depot or simply avoid congestion, the vehicle tracking and dynamic scheduling functions will allow you to adapt the route without re-doing the entire optimisation.

It’s pretty clear how adoption of this kind of technology can give some companies a competitive edge. However, this technology isn’t exclusive to just ecommerce fields. In industries directed by a large amount of legislation, the recording, tracking and reporting of resolution time-frames is a significant task, with penalties for failing to comply. Dynamic scheduling can automate and record information, prioritising the workloads in order to meet constitutional targets. In fact, any organisation that deals with a high volume of reactive, unpredictable visits will inevitably find dynamic scheduling invaluable. We’re also seeing increasing uptake in the public sector, for applications such as riot control and other real-time emergency service activities.

As organisations strive to be more competitive and efficient at the same time as meeting increasing expectations, dynamic scheduling could be the pivotal tool to success in the future.

Back to businesses, it’s certainly encouraging to see increasing involvement at the end of the supply chain, and the realisation that things can be done better. They have to be improved, across the board, but let’s take a look at an example purely from ecommerce: the Office for National Statistics reported that Britons spent £539m online each week last September, out of £5.61bn total sales. That 9.6% share is the largest on record – more than three times the 3% share back in early 2007, and a 30% increase on a year ago.

With this kind of growth, consumers are demanding more – and what’s the main thing online commerce lacks over its bricks-and-mortar counterpart? Instant gratification. While businesses have been examining analytics, poring over product pages and endlessly optimising their websites, all-too often that vital touch-point – the moment when the customer receives their goods – has been ignored. The same principle applies for B2B as it does for B2C. Ultimately, no matter how exceptional your customer’s journey is, if they don’t receive their goods conveniently and in time, they won’t be a customer for long.

With Aurora’s innovation in delivery, will it be too long before we see roaming fulfilment vans prowling the M25 corridor, waiting for their next orders – and constantly re-evaluating the best route in which to make them?

The RouteOptimiser.com interface has had a major facelift over the past few months, adding plenty of new features along the way (the implementation of Google Maps being a personal favourite). The aim of this was to make the service more intuitive and attractive to use for the lower-volume Route Optimiser user.

This has been achieved by implementing major features, such as adding waypoints by finding them on a map, to minor features, like being able to colour-code your depots and vehicles.

The feedback we’ve had so far suggests that these changes have improved the service significantly.

Although this tool is of great benefit to the ‘man with a van’, some larger organisations have expressed an interest in integrating the service into their own application. Some systems integrators have also come to us to enquire about adding Route Optimiser as a feature of their own offering that they are providing to their clients. This is why our development team have published a whole pallet of APIs to make this possible.

As well as being a more attractive option for those with more complicated route optimisation requirements, there are a number of features which are exclusive to the API. To name a few:

Dynamic Scheduling: You’ve already optimised your route, but halfway through the day you get more orders that you would like to send out that day. Previously you would have to optimise a brand new route, but now you can dynamically add new waypoints into a route that has already been optimised. Not only does this make things more flexible, but it also cheaper for those who use the credit pack licensing option as the eight-credit charge for optimising a new route wouldn’t apply.

Speed Profiles: A particularly popular feature which contains information on the average speed on particular roads around the UK. For example, the average speed of a road during rush hour is usually several mph lower than at 3pm in the afternoon. The optimiser knows which roads to avoid at particular times of day, and will calculate its route accordingly.

Vehicle Tracking: By using our ‘log’ APIs, you are able to find what time your vehicles start and finish their routes, as well as when they arrive at each delivery point. You are also able to log the geographic position of a vehicle while they are on the road. These APIs are perhaps most effective when used in collaboration with dynamic scheduling, and are most popular with larger courier companies who need to keep track of their drivers to make sure they are on the road, and not enjoying an extended lunch break!

Integrations: As well as working on these new web services we have also been beavering away at some ready-made integrations into existing platforms, such as Salesforce. One particular feature within the imminent release is a prospect heat-map. If you’re a travelling salesman meeting a number of leads from within your Salesforce CRM, you can optimise the visits and we will tell you which other leads are within a certain radius, giving you the option of adding them to your day’s visits. Affectionately christened in the office as the ‘Route Op Sausage’, this is a feature that we are particularly excited about, and think will add an extra dimension to users of our Salesforce app.

To conclude, if the Route Optimiser.com website doesn’t quite meet your needs then our versatile web service platform may well have the answer to your routing problems. If you have any bespoke needs then please let us know – we’d be very interested to hear your thoughts!

Britain’s motorists have taken a hammering in recent months, with spiralling fuel costs, rising inflation and high taxation making huge dents in everyone’s wallets.

Inflation hit a record high last week. Figures show that the consumer price index rose by 5.2% in the year to September, exceeding economists’ forecasts. The detailed figures from the Office for National Statistics came a day after energy secretary Chris Huhne called an emergency Whitehall summit over soaring energy prices.

Costs of gas, electricity and other fuels rose 18.3% on the year in September, while transport costs were up 12.8%. Perhaps the most alarming figure was how car fuel costs have risen by 17.8% in the year.

A spokesman for the Treasury said that the Government were “aware that these are difficult times for households, as the price levels continue to be affected by high global oil and gas prices.” According to the spokesman, the Government will be taking action to help consumers with the high costs, including cutting fuel duty and freezing council tax.

Rising fuel costs

Fuel costs have increased by a third in just two years, with 60% of the price being tax. High fuel prices drive inflation because fuel is fundamental to the infrastructure of the UK. And the impact of these figures will hit no other sector harder, than those in the transport and logistical industry.

Research earlier in the year from Moneysupermarket.com found that record fuel prices were forcing drivers to change their driving habits, with 62% of respondents claiming to have reduced the amount of time they spend behind a wheel. Nearly 3 in 5 drivers said they are amalgamating shorter journeys and taking one trip where they might have previously taken several.

With energy prices rising, companies are constantly looking for that extra saving and ways to cut back on their emissions. Switched on companies such as Sonic Direct are already taking major steps to manage this unavoidable expense. Sonic Direct are the UK’s largest independent electrical retail outlet. Their success has been built on “offering the most competitive pricing without compromising customer service.” They managed to save over £50,000 by deploying Route Optimiser technology across its fleet of 25 vehicles.

Improve working processes

Back-office applications such as route optimising software allow companies to improve their working processes by reducing unnecessary road miles. The online service plans the shortest route for single vehicles or whole fleets, taking into account height, weight, and width to help find the shortest, most efficient route.

Fuel prices are continuing to rise and remain a major headache for fleet managers. Such increases make it even more sensible to route-optimise.

How to cut costs:

· Check tyre pressure as poorly inflated tyres put more strain on the engine and use more fuel.

· Get your vehicle serviced regularly to maintain engine efficiency.

· Use route optimising technology to reduce unnecessary mileage.

Retail guru Mary Portas made her name overhauling the retail industry. She educates retailers on how to improve their customer service and get their businesses booming.

In her latest TV series, Portas takes on a risky venture and releases her own fashion range within London’s House of Fraser.

Throughout the project Portas aims to advocate all the best practice she has learned through 20 years in the business, from expert customer service to smart displays and effective marketing.

Mary Portas understands something fundamental for retailers. Whether you manage a bricks-and-mortar store or an online establishment, customer service is invaluable. Throughout the series, Portas’ focus is heavily centralised on the customer’s experience, demonstrating that a good level of service is the key differentiator for any business. And if Portas’ satisfied customers and thriving revenue are anything to go by, this approach works.

In the latest episode, as the latest dress sold out, it became apparent that replenishment and deliveries are critical to the overall customer experience.

Delivery options -  more important than you might think

Postcode Anywhere’s recent survey of UK consumers has confirmed that delivery options are essential for customer service and business revenue. According to the survey, nearly two-thirds of consumers rate timed delivers as important to their online shopping experience. Customers are too busy these days to waste their time waiting for a delivery. Extras such as timed delivery slots can contribute significantly to a customer’s overall experience, giving a company a competitive edge.

So what can we learn from this TV series? That paying attention to the whole customer experience is vital for any successful business. It is important to remember that the customer’s experience doesn’t just finish when the customer leaves your shop or website. It ends when the customer has received their product, and is happy with the experience they have received.

“The customer is always right” is age old adage heralded by many, and still rings true today. But what used to satisfy customers is now no longer enough. More and more etailers are going to increasing lengths in order to make shopping more convenient for cash and time-strapped shoppers this Christmas.

A recent announcement from high street retailer Aurora, the umbrella company of fashion stores Oasis, Warehouse and Coast, states that they will deliver clothes almost as fast as a pizza delivery man. The fashion giants have promised to deliver their clothes in less than 90 minutes from ordering.

Aurora’s finance director Richard Glanville says the service has already proven successful: “In this economic environment, people are more likely to buy a dress on a Friday for a Saturday wedding. A couple of years ago people planned a dress like that for months in advance. But there is now much more ‘buy-now-wear-now’ than before.”

And Aurora aren’t the only ones. More and more ecommerce websites are focusing on their delivery processes as the most important way to ensure customer retention. Many etailers offer several different delivery choices. ASOS even offer the same day delivery, while Amazon are looking to make deliveries through secure drop boxes. There is an apparent trend across the market to enable customers to get what they want when they want it.

Guy Mucklow Postcode Anywhere’s Managing Director said: “Getting deliveries out quickly is a vital part of the buying process. Customers’ expectations are changing rapidly, demanding more for less. Consumers are no longer happy to waste time, waiting at home for a delivery. They expect to know when there items will be delivered. Of course for a courier visiting up to 100 addresses within a tight schedule, meeting a pre-agreed time window isn’t always easy.

“There are however, route optimising tools that can re-order delivery points for you. It cuts down on the time it takes to manually plan deliveries and the fuel cost of making them. More importantly it can schedule delivery windows so you can let your customers know when they can expect their delivery.”

In the end, it may be your service, not the product itself that prescribes whether or not you retain your customers. If you give the customers what they want, when they want, the way they want it, you are more likely to turn them into a satisfied customer.

Why do people use Route Optimiser?

As someone who speaks to potential and existing Route Optimiser customers on a daily basis, it’s pretty obvious that one of the most common reasons is to help businesses and individuals reduce costs.

The Route Optimiser service is a great way to save money. By making sure you choose the most appropriate licence, you could be saving even more!

How Do You License Yours?

We pride ourselves providing an accessible and affordable service for businesses of all sizes – demonstrated by our sliding-scale, ‘pay-as-you-go’ (credit pack) or flat annual fee vehicle licensing.

Both models have their merits.

Credit packs

• Easy to see how much you’ve used
• You can choose exactly how much you want to buy
• Easy to manage and control

Vehicle licences

• For heavy usage
• A must if you have several vehicles
• Good if you prefer a straightforward, flat annual fee.

The question remains: are you taking full advantage of the cost savings that Route Optimiser can provide? The chances are that if you’re buying credit packs every week, month or quarter, you could be saving even more money by switching to a larger credit pack, or even to a vehicle licence.

The reverse is also true. If you’ve bought four vehicle licences, but only use the service sparingly, credits might be more cost-effective.

Credits or Licences?

A bit of background first. With the credit packs, every optimisation job consumes eight credits as standard, and then a further one credit per waypoint.

However, these extra features consume more credits:

• Timeslot specific waypoints: three credits per waypoint
• Vehicle height/weight/width/axle restrictions: five credits per optimisation job

Which credit pack size?

Although we will email you to let you know if you’re running low on credits, it’s possible you might find yourself running through your credits quicker than you anticipated, and find yourself topping up quite regularly. If this sounds like you, then it could be simple to shave quite a bit off the cost of the technology. For instance, if you buy a pack of 300 credits at £25 every month it would cost you £300 for a years’ worth (3,600 credits). How does this compare to a larger credit pack? Well, if you’d jumped straight in and bought the larger pack of 3,500 credits (valid for 12 months), you’d actually save £150 across the year.

How about licences?

How do licences compare? Annual vehicle licences start at £250 for one licence. You’re only limited by the number of licences you purchase, and the upper limit of 400 optimisation jobs per year. Full access to all of the extra features of Route Optimiser are available at no extra cost, so you can add as many timeslot specific waypoints as you need.

If any of this seems confusing, the best part is that you can find us on the end of the phone. Give us an idea of your usage and we’ll work out the best plan for you.

Last week, we held our first LIVE webcast for Route Optimiser.  The presentation outlines the history of Route Optimiser, its benefits and features, and a start to finish demonstration of the service.  There was a huge amount of interest in the webcast.

Many of the registrants requested a recorded version in order to refer back to and to also show colleagues.  As we aren’t ones to disappoint, a summary version was recorded and it has been released online.  To check it out simply visit our YouTube channel or click on the image to play the presentation.

If you have any ideas or suggestions for upcoming webinars, please get in touch! We’re always keen to know where we can help.

Introducing the new ‘Maximum Day Length’ feature

We’re always talking about how much time you can save using route optimization for your multi-drop route planning. (Our experiments in the past have shown an average 20-30% saving in time and distance.) But what if you’re not so interested in time saved, and simply want to get as many visits into your day as possible?

If you manage a team of salespeople, and want them to work for exactly 8 hours a day, it can be a struggle to try and decide which waypoints to include in your optimization job. Previously, you could do a ‘best-guess’, and then manually add or remove waypoints later, or you could fiddle about with timeslots on the waypoints, but neither method was particularly satisfactory.

Help is just a click away

With this in mind we created a new feature that lets you set the length of time you wish to be out on the road. You can then enter as many waypoints as you wish, and the optimiser will try and fit as many as possible into your allotted time. No matter what, you’ll always be back at the finish point in time for dinner.

Though I added this feature into the route optimization API some time ago, we are looking to bring more and more API-only features into the reach of everyday users. Moving forward, you should see a steady stream of new features appearing on the site.

How to use it

Maximum day lengths are easy to set up from within the optimization process. (The feature is only available in the new-style process, currently in beta). The controls for this feature can be found under the “Advanced Settings” of the job setup pane. Checking “Enable day length” enables this feature. Once checked, you set your day end time using the dropdowns.

You’ll notice a dropdown entitled “Day length strictness”. “Flexible” (the default) means that the optimizer may elect to go very slightly over the day length in order to hit an extra waypoint if there’s one just within reach. Set this to “Strict” if you want to be ultra-strict and get back not even a minute later than your end time.

Next, just set up the rest of your route as normal, entering as many vehicles and waypoints as you like. Remember that you will only be charged credits for the waypoints we route you to successfully, and not ones that are missed. The site will let you know the maximum number of credits you will consume before you start the job running.

Results

There is also a small change on the results screen. If any of the waypoints that you enter cannot be included in your optimized route due to these time constraints, they are output in their own special tab (called “Excluded Waypoints”). Furthermore, any excluded waypoint can be identified by its own special marker and can be shown on the map with your other optimised waypoints using the “Show All” button.

This feature was added as the direct result of a customer request. At Route Optimiser we endeavour to respond to as many feature requests as possible, so if there’s something you’d like to see, just let us know, any time, either by replying to this blog post, or by using the contact us form.

While our web development team have been beavering away on the new optimisation process in the website (which, I’m sure you’ll agree, is looking fantastic), I’ve been quietly busying myself with some major new upgrades to the back end.

Although the bulk of our customers choose to use the website interface on routeoptimiser.com, some of our larger customers prefer to integrate our technology into their own systems. We call this suite of web services our “API”, and this is what I’ve been working on improving for the last few months.

Feature Overload

My original optimisation web service, several years ago, was very simple – you gave the web service a start and an end postcode, a list of delivery postcodes, and a few seconds later the web service returned out your optimised route. Over time, I’ve added more features: timeslots, vehicle capacities, waypoint pause times, vehicle dimensions, driver breaks and speed profiles. Currently in beta, we have yet more features: variable vehicles, maximum day lengths and waypoint priorities. All this is adding to the complexity of the original web service, and it’s starting to show.

But perhaps the most radical new feature that’s currently in Beta is the Insert method, which allows you to insert a new waypoint into an already-optimised route without re-doing the entire optimisation. This is very useful for people that have last-minute deliveries or collections to make, after they’ve already planned and/or started their route.

This insert method is, however, starting to highlight a growing problem with the current API model. The API is, essentially, stateless – that is, you give it some input, we give you the output, then we forget about it. If you want to do anything else with the results, you (the programmer) have to remember them yourself. To do something like an Insert, you have to tell us not only the details of the new waypoint, but also the full input that you originally put into the Optimise method, as well as the original output you got from the Optimise method. It turns out, that’s 43 separate input variables, many of which are arrays of values. Clearly, this is not very efficient, pretty confusing, and prone to subtle user errors.

New Model API

Today I’ve released a set of 12 new optimisation web services, designed around a different philosophy. These services are designed to remember the state of your optimisation jobs by storing the information in our databases. You start off by calling the Create method to create an empty optimisation job, and this gives you a unique JobID. You can then pass this JobID into any of the other services to do things like adding waypoints and vehicles, tweaking the job parameters, reviewing the input, checking the status of the optimisation (in progress, complete, etc.).  There’s a service to start the optimisation, one to get the results and some for getting turn-by-turn directions and polylines.

An added benefit is that by splitting up the StartOptimisation and GetResults web services, this eliminates the timeout issues that some people were getting with the old Optimise web service, which for a very large job, could take several minutes to complete.

Future Plans

These 12 services are just the start of a series of API improvements scheduled for the coming months. Phase two will be to create services to generate the PDFs and SatNav itinerary files that you see on the website, and then to tie the routeoptimiser.com website in to use the new API. With this convergence complete, you’ll be able to create a job using the API and view the results by logging into the website, and vice versa.

Phase three will be the addition of some really neat new services that will allow you to edit a route after completion. You’ll be able to add, delete and move waypoints around, reverse a single route and create a new job based on the input of an old job. This will replace the Insert method above (removing the need for 43 input parameters).

The fourth phase we have pencilled in is the inclusion of features to support vehicle and parcel tracking. You’ll be able to call a web service periodically to tell us where your vehicles currently are, and then retrieve accurate updated ETA information for later waypoints. You could then choose to use this information to keep your customers better informed.

I hope you’ll agree that this new way of optimising will be much neater and clearer for programmers to use, and I look forward to completing the rest of it. If you want to have a play with the new API, currently in Beta, please create an account and then check out the API documentation. If you have any questions, get in touch!