In this Guide
How delivery management could save your wholesale business hours!
Organising delivery runs is a daily task for wholesale food suppliers. To make the task all the more fun it normally takes place in the early hours of the morning.
Without being able to accurately predict who is going to order and when, this process is time-consuming, and by the looks of how things currently operate – a boring part of daily business!
How are delivery runs currently organised?
Fresho’s experience with UK food wholesalers has highlighted that delivery runs are often stowed away with one employee…or two if your business is lucky!
Once orders have been entered, picking slips are printed, and whoever holds the key to delivery runs has to sort through and organise the paper into runs. Once picking and packing are complete, weights are updated and invoices are printed.
Again, these then have to be reorganised and moved into drop order for the van drivers to have straightforward routes. From order to invoice, delivery run management alone takes hours and holds up the whole processing operation of suppliers. Without being organised into runs, picking can’t begin as orders have to be picked by the run to get the first orders out.
What are the big problems?
One of the most significant problems is access to delivery run information. With only a few people in the business who know which customers belong on the local run, and which on the north run, this step of processing can be difficult to complete.
It means that there is limited flexibility with shifts, and approving holidays, as the business is reliant on one person to operate.
While it is possible for this information to be written down, this rarely happens due to the time pressures of the industry. With 24-hour operations, finding the time to complete tasks that are not immediately necessary is difficult. If some time is made, it is a time-consuming process for the next person to learn, and once they have, the same problems begin to arise.
How can the problems associated with organising delivery runs be solved?
Software which stores delivery run information and allows you to update this daily is the next step to improved processing.
Combining the unique knowledge of your customers with a platform that remembers this information, delivery runs can be streamlined into your food wholesale business.
Fresho enables you to organise customers into runs and drop order within each run. What’s more – this process only has to happen once. Everytime customers place orders, they will default into the correct run and position themselves into the correct drop order.
No more paper piles!
You can also incorporate this information into many of the processes of your wholesale business. You can pick, print and invoice by run if this suits your processing.
And you can still keep control and flexibility...
- What happens if I am a driver down?
- What happens if a customer asks for an early delivery?
- Can I change runs without changing them permanently?
These questions often arise from suppliers, and the answer… with Fresho, you can!
The ability to edit delivery runs daily ensures if you are a driver down, customer orders can be managed on a day-to-day basis.
A real life example. Jay Carroll, Carrolls Greengrocer.
With customers also being able to add additional notes e.g. early delivery requests the daily management function ensures you can move these drops up as a priority.
Not only does this ensure greater customer satisfaction, it puts customer service at the forefront of your business. Customers can see how you prioritise their demands and give your wholesale business a competitive edge in an increasingly saturated market.
What's next:
To incorporate an effective delivery run management system and streamline your wholesale food business, Fresho is your solution. Get rid of paper piles and confusion over who belongs on which run, and let Fresho take on this responsibility.
