Top 10 Routing and Scheduling Solution Companies - 2018

WorkWave: Saving Time & Money with Smarter Route Planning for the Last Mile

Riccardo Bocci, Sr. Product Manager

Logistics companies have always planned routes with a singular focus: to minimize the overall logistics costs and maximize profit margins. This approach yielded them good outcomes until recently. With customer centricity becoming the critical factor to be successful in the present consumer and B2B market, most logistics and transportation companies are having to radically rethink their business strategies to provide a better delivery experience. At the same time, juggling a variety of customer requests like same-day, next-day, or scheduled delivery, these businesses have come to realize that manually planned routes are no longer “good enough” to keep their operations cost and time-efficient.

Because of these challenges, NJ-based WorkWave, a champion in the field services management space, saw an opportunity to utilize their decades of expertise in simplifying the complexities of the mobile workforce to solve the routing challenges of last-mile logistics and transportation. Being vastly familiar in dealing with consumer behavior and their expectations over the years, WorkWave architected an intelligent route planning solution that is not only aimed at optimizing fleet operations, but providing a better customer experience.

WorkWave Route Manager, a route planning and GPS tracking solution, solves routing difficulties in two main areas. First, their automated route planning software eliminates the need for any guesswork in routing operations. With a user-friendly dashboard that gives businesses the ability to modify and customize routes, the software creates optimized, driver-friendly route plans in minutes. Second, what makes WorkWave Route Manager unique in the routing domain is the added layer of GPS tracking. While GPS tracking and telematics have always been a part of the last-mile logistics space, there was no viable solution that incorporated live GPS position into route plans.

WorkWave Route Manager is an intelligent route planning solution that optimizes and powers smarter, more dependable deliveries for last mile operations

By integrating GPS tracking with route planning, companies not only gain complete visibility into the entire logistics workflow— helping them locate vehicles faster and receive real-time ETAs— but also are able to follow the progress of tasks and make dynamic changes to routes. Describing this approach of routing, Riccardo Bocci, Sr. Product Manager of WorkWave Route Manager, says, “Route planning combined with live GPS tracking gives you the best of both worlds from one screen.”

In addition, logistics firms can utilize the historical data of their fleets and generate insights on “planned vs. actual” results to review and identify the shortcomings of the operations and work toward improving them for the future. “It’s not the visibility that is important, rather how you utilize the visibility to enhance the whole chain of route planning and execution cycle,” mentions Bocci.

By proficiently harnessing the synergy between route planning and GPS tracking, WorkWave Route Manager’s strategic approach has been instrumental in cementing its success in the competitive last-mile logistics market. Citing an example of one of their clients, Bocci illustrates how they helped a food distribution service in New Jersey to revamp their routing technology. The business wanted a routing solution that could help them optimize productivity while not undermining the cost parameters. Employing WorkWave’s Route Manager and GPS tracking, the business was able to record a 94 percent increase in their ROI.

Witnessing the current market drift toward consumerization, Bocci is confident that WorkWave’s tactical route planning approach will be a game-changer in the routing and scheduling industry in the years to come. Keeping that in mind, as a roadmap for the future, WorkWave intends to continue leveraging new technologies to strengthen their products and has already started working on integrating IoT within the ambit of their solutions.