As a florist, you might not be crazy-busy all of the time, but some days the orders stack up really fast. There are weddings, banquets and ladies waiting all over town for your delivery guy to show up. And while he might get the job done just fine, things would run more efficiently if you had a savvy program for creating a route between multiple delivery locations.
Route planning can help you get the right flowers into the right hands when they’re supposed to be there. It can help your driver get his job done with as little backtracking as possible.
Suppose your driver delivers his west side orders– a birthday arrangement, a luncheon centerpiece, an I-love-you dozen roses– right on time. Then he heads all the way over to the east side to finish his morning route.
Just five more stops, and he’ll head back to the shop for the next load. But oops! He notices a box with boutonnieres, centerpieces, and a bridal bouquet sitting in the back of the truck. He should have dropped those off at a church on the west side two hours ago.
He has to do it. He has to backtrack– retrace his route all the way back to the west side– before the bride finds out about the missing flowers and starts to cry. Route planning can prevent mishaps like this.
If your delivery guy is on a tight schedule, he probably loads the flowers, grabs the delivery slips, then hits the road. He might take a moment to organize his orders by eyeballing the addresses and mentally setting a route before he pulls away.
Unfortunately, it’s easy to miss an address that way. Missed addresses can mean backtracking– and sometimes going around in circles– or losing customers. Doing that even once can mean lost time that he may never be able to make up. If you pay your driver by the hour, you’ll pay for the time whether the orders flow smoothly or not.
You have to spend money on gas, but why pay more than you need. If your driver is out there zipping back and forth instead of following the best route possible, it can cost you gas money and more.
If he’s driving your van, you’ll pay the cost of gas for each mile he drives. You’ll also pay extra maintenance for all those extra miles. If he’s an employee, you’ll pay him by the hour no matter how inefficient he is.
It’s easy for route planning to eliminate the driving habits that steal away your time and money. It takes a few minutes to input your data, and after that, a route planning program can do the rest.
It can automatically select the best route for your driver. It can prioritize you delivery schedule by location, showing which stop should come first, second or third. It can help your flower delivery system run more efficiently.
If you’re interested in learning more about route planning contact us for a free demo.