Courier and parcel delivery has gained a lot of prominence these days with so many e-commerce stores businesses thriving around, when looking at the Fedex revenue that touched almost $70 billion in 2019.
This has led to so many businesses launching courier and parcel tracking software such as last mile delivery app to have products or services be delivered to customers for letting things be efficient, swift, and easy with logistics.
Why a mobile app really needed?
People tend to expect gratification in no time especially in today’s world. This is the reason why patience level of people have been compromised over time.
Hence, people expect quick rapid delivery, and that is the major success factor for any courier dispatch software. Quick deliveries decide the real success of an app and in turn the business on the whole.
Many businesses fail due to plethora of problems likewise delay in deliveries, wrong product delivery, packages that are lost, and so much more. However, they can be surely controlled especially with deliveries done real fast using the last mile delivery app solution.
Barriers to overcome for scaling up business
There are just too many hurdles to overcome with time and cost involvement which is the case with any courier management software. Let us understand what those hurdles are and how do they interfere with a last mile delivery software:
Packages getting lost in transit
Inspite of the fact this is an occasional occurrence, with just few cases among thousands, still even one package lost can result in negative publicity, leading from one to hundreds to in turn thousands of lost customers.
With an app in place, one can keep track of the product category and product while keeping track of the logistics service provider and always notified regarding the transit statuses with real time transportation notifications.
Deliver packages with time delay
This is a very common phenomenon taking place wherein so many packages get delayed in a day leading to delayed home deliveries by couple of days, and it is one of the major problems faced by e-commerce websites today.
Read More: Last mile delivery for ecommerce – Challenges and benefits.
An app can keep track of the order times and delivery times while keeping the customers updated regarding the order statuses with real time notifications.
Parcel sorting is a problem
With so many different parcels coming in daily, it is a cumbersome task to sort them out daily, location wise and based on the category served.
With an app in place, products can be sorted with ease at the warehouse, since all the details with regards to a product is stored in the app, and hence the daunting task becomes way easier since everything is sorted within the app.
Redundancy in delegating a driver
This is also not so frequent happening wherein same drivers are allotted with the task of delivering same products to same locations, or drivers are allotted with the same delivery task, or a driver is allotted with the task of delivering at far off locations.
An app can tackle such redundant problems saving time, money, and manpower resources of an e-commerce company while saving on the turnaround customer service of an e-commerce store staying ahead of the competitors.
Hard to stay in touch with customers
With a traditional setup in place it is hard to connect with every individual customer especially when there are thousands or millions of them.
Hence, an app can make a huge difference by allowing the e-commerce businesses to have a personalised in-app chat with customers personally and get to know the order details.
Customer loyalty is at stake
Misbehaviour towards customers or not responding to them on time can result in a major loss in terms of customer loyalty and in turn those other ten customers that satisfied customers potentially can bring for you.
As soon as an app is in place customer loyalty is taken care of by giving out loyalty offers, discounts, and points so as to reward them for loyalty.
Managing operations is not as easy as it seems
It can be sometimes tough to handle coordination between three parties as in e-commerce app owners or business, logistics staff, and customers with just so many orders to fulfil in a day.
Having a software like last mile delivery can make things way easier since operation management can be dealt with smoothness with an ease of coordination and status exchanges at all points.
Receiving the feedback in real time is not possible without technology
It is very crucial to receive feedback all the time coming from customers to e-commerce businesses and logistics staff, and that is difficult to collect in the absence of a system.
When you have something like a last mile delivery solution in place, things get much more organised with feedback not just collected via an app but stored on servers for future references.
Tough to do route planning
There are multiple routes from source to destination and tracking an ideal route among them can be a tough call, especially with last minute changes leading to changes in route optimisation.
Hence, it is an app that keeps all the three parties informed regarding the change in route leading to changes in the delivery schedule.
Physical delivery records are difficult to store
With so many orders fulfilled in a day, it can be cumbersome to have physical records stored with all the documentation and invoices along delivery receipts.
However, when you have a package delivery software in place, it does have the capabilities to store al the historical records in a digital manner so that it can be retrieved whenever required.
Transparency in supply chain is an issue
Supply chain management is a complex process that needs continuous monitoring and without a proper watch in real time, the entire delivery process can go haywire and messy resulting in all kinds of issues such as wrong product delivered, delivery to wrong address, delay in delivery, or the parties involved in the supply chain management taking the approach lightly.
Hence, a courier tracking software brings sure shot transparency since all the parties are connected with each other via an app in real time.
Read More: Route Optimization Software Market size and the growth rate be in 2025
Last few words…
For the last stage of SCM to go successful, it is very critical to have a last mile courier and parcel delivery scheduling software optimisation software in place to overcome the hurdles as we discussed.
Without an optimum last mile delivery route planning optimisation system in place, a courier and parcel business can’t go long, outperforming competitors in competitive scenario
