October begins and BlackFriday is getting closer and closer, it's time to get ready and be ready for its arrival. In this article we want to discuss the challenges faced by e-commerce and the last mile today.

Cumulative sales between BlackFriday and Christmas account for 30% of annual turnover for some e-commerce sectors. That is why it is very important for the sector to be able to know what challenges it will have to face this year.

In recent years, e-commerce has grown steadily, especially with the momentum it gained in 2020 as a result of the covid19 pandemic. Now in 2022 and with another economic context, it seems that this growth is slowing down and is almost stagnant. Specialists anticipate that this year there will be fewer offers, due to the economic context, lack of stock and reduced production.

In this context, new challenges are presented for e-commerce. First, end customers continue to push for speed, flexibility, and convenience. Get everything delivered to your doorstep. However, on the other hand, they also prioritize companies that are more sustainable and reduce their emissions. In any case, many forget about this aspect and the perception of the negative impact on sustainability is reduced compared to the convenience of receiving their order at the time they want. Then there is a dichotomy for logistics companies: to be faster or to be more sustainable. Perhaps the answer is neither of these two options but rather the convenience in delivery.

Second, there is an accessibility problem. In recent years, the Internet has allowed access to e-commerce everywhere, even the most remote, and this pushes distribution to go further and further. But in terms of logistics and especially infrastructure, not so much progress has been made, which is why it is costly and even difficult to reach remote towns and areas, especially in less developed countries.

Thirdly, the post-pandemic era, the modality of free returns for online purchases has become widespread, which presents a Great reverse logistics challenge. Offering free returns also poses a duality since it is not sustainable for packages to travel long distances and then return, wasting fuel and generating costs and emissions. In the future, it should be reviewed if it is convenient to provide a free returns service, if it is necessary to charge it or encourage the customer to approach a physical store to add this reverse logistics, minimizing trips.

Finally, another challenge is to improve the user experience: essential in this era when people place a lot of weight on the opinions of other customers, in addition to their own, and decide to repeat their purchases where they have received the best service. To improve reliability, there are tools such as order tracking, proof of delivery, direct communication with the customer, satisfaction or opinion surveys, among others. Taking care of and improving the user experience throughout the year is possible when you use a logistics service that has these tools, allowing more reliability and transparency for the end customer. The quality of the service is what sets you apart from the competition.

Our main recommendation for this BlackFriday is to anticipate. There is still time left, specific strategies can be planned for this date, not only for marketing and advertising, but also for logistics, to be prepared for increases in demand. In addition, we believe that technology is the main solution to many of the challenges posed in last-mile distribution.

That's why we encourage you to try Routal, a digitalization tool where you can optimize your delivery routes, use the restrictions your operations need, control routes in real time, send direct communications to the customer to keep them informed and reduce failed deliveries, collect proof of delivery, send customer and driver satisfaction surveys, as well as reduce costs and time in your operations. Test Routal free for 10 days by clicking hither.

This year the European Mobility Week is celebrated from September 16 to 22 with the motto “Combine and move!” to place the emphasis on intermodality. The celebration will begin on Friday, September 16 with Park (ing) Day and will end on September 22, World Car Free Day.

The objective of the European Mobility Week is to raise awareness of the need to reduce the use of private motorized vehicles, in order to achieve a less polluted city and also reduce the space usually occupied by these vehicles. As well as promoting more sustainable travel such as public transport, cycling or walking.

As part of this event since Routal we want to tell you how we apply our contribution to the sustainability of the city and how we reduce CO2 emissions when it comes to moving to the office.

Since 2020, Routal has left the employee free choice to work from home or go to the office. Routal currently employs 10 people. The offices in Barcelona are located in the center of the city and are easily accessible by public transport. However, working from home is everyone's favorite option. When we decided to meet at the office, we traveled by bike, scooter, on foot or by subway.

Avoiding the use of private motorized vehicles and working from home has meant savings in emissions of 6,733 kg of CO2 per year (6.7 tons) for Routal.

You can encourage your employees to work from home to avoid large CO2 emissions every year as well as improve work-life balance. Our own CEO (who has just become a father for the second time) is grateful to be able to take his daughter to school every day 😄 and not miss a school party. It's a matter of organization and flexibility, he says.

However, if working from home isn't possible at your company because the type of work doesn't allow it, you can help your employees reduce their emissions. A practical way is to share a vehicle between several. For this purpose you can use Routal to see how your employees could easily and quickly carpool. You just have to enter the addresses of all your employees, adjust the number of vehicles that may be needed, and we take care of planning the most efficient routes for them to share their vehicles. Watch the video:

Try it yourself!

As a company, we are aware of the need to improve the world of our children and that is why we work not only to offer a better service but also to help our customers with their environmental objectives, reducing emissions, improving the quality of their deliveryers' work and offering a more convenient service to their customers.

If you're wondering how we do it, I encourage you to look This other video and you'll see how we can save you hundreds of liters of fuel every month and thousands of hours behind the wheel every year.

You can do your route by trying Routal free for 10 days by clicking here.

Gas, gasoline, gasoline, fuel, there are hundreds of ways to call it depending on where you are. However, the increases in their costs are being reflected around the world. That's why in this article we'll give you tips to save fuel and thus reduce not only costs, but also CO2 emissions from your logistics operations.

Efficient routes 🛣️

If there is something essential for saving gas, it is choosing the most optimal route, traveling as few kilometers as possible through the right area and taking into account variables that may arise, such as road conditions and maximum speed.

Our main advice is to use a route optimization tool (such as Routal 😉) that provides you with the most efficient routes adapted to your operation. The optimizer uses artificial intelligence to define among infinite variables which is the most effective route to complete the route you need in a few minutes, saving you a lot of time compared to doing it manually. You can set restrictions, time windows, weight and volume limitations, and more. This way you will get the most suitable routes and in this way you will increase your productivity and you will save not only fuel, but also costs.

Maintenance 🛠️

Secondly, it is essential to save fuel that the vehicle to be used works properly, so we recommend regular maintenance of your fleet. This includes doing regulatory checks, checking oil and lubricants, and also checking tire pressure whenever possible. These revisions prevent further inconveniences in the future and save money in the event of breakdowns. Vehicle manufacturers establish the recommended period for each revision depending on the model and age of the vehicle, and some are mandatory to maintain the current warranty. We recommend that maintenance be carried out by specialists or trained personnel.

Driving 🚙

Another way to make fuel consumption efficient is the way you drive. Avoiding aggressive driving, trying to maintain a constant speed and respecting speed limits reduce fuel consumption. Safe driving courses are available to improve drivers' way of driving and to keep up to date.

You should also turn off the engine when you are standing still for a long time and try to keep the air conditioner above 21 degrees and below 24 to avoid overspending.

Hybrid or electric vehicle 🔌

Another option to save fuel permanently is to switch to a hybrid (or fully electric) vehicle to reduce emissions and improve efficiency. A hybrid vehicle can save us a lot of fuel, especially if it is used in the city for short routes. In addition, the maintenance of these cars is cheaper. Another benefit is that, due to their rating, they have no traffic restrictions in cities with low emission areas, they have discounts on tolls and also reduced taxes.

The Routal route optimizer includes a limiting kilometer restriction so that when planning your routes you can take into account the range of your electric vehicle.

Despite the increase in the price of fuel, there are different ways to save it, put them to the test and reduce your expenses too. Follow all these tips and also use a route optimizer to improve your operational efficiency and productivity, saving costs and fuel. Try Routal free for 10 days hither.

Do you have other tips for saving fuel? Leave us your comment.

Tugou, a scheduled delivery company, was looking for a solution to optimize its home delivery routes in Peru. They found SmartMonkey, tested the platform, and stayed with us. Discover the benefits and savings they achieved with SmartMonkey.

Tugou was born in 2020, in the midst of a pandemic to meet a need that entrepreneurs had. The starting point was to migrate from a trusted taxi service to a professional service, with transparency and confidence that your products will arrive in a timely manner. They sought solutions that would allow them to differentiate themselves from the competition as an added value and for that they explored digitization and route optimization tools. They tried two or three alternatives, and after a few months they found SmartMonkey on the market, tried the solution and stayed with it.

There are several reasons why they decided to choose Routal. First of all, in terms of user, administrator and end customer it is easy to use and friendly, therefore the learning curve of anyone who comes to work is short, and this It helps to reduce costs also in the case of staff turnover. On the other hand, it is competitive in the market in terms of investment. The Gorilla license offers in one what other companies offer in separate modules at a higher cost.

Daniel Campos, operations manager at Tugou, comments: “It's a platform that we use 24/7, which has been very supportive, and that in a very short time we have gotten to know thoroughly. It's a very webapp Intuitive and this is very important for someone who uses it on a daily basis.”

As for the tool, they believe that it is relevant to versatility in the planning modules to add restrictions: weight, volume, and distinctive load characteristics. Also important to them is the agility in route planning and visibility in real time, being able to see where the vehicles are located and at what times the deliveries are taking place.

The ability to have simultaneous access to the platform to see the programmed route is something that stands out: “We are 4 people who have access and we review the routes daily. It is one of the differential characteristics and very important to us. Also the fact that for the driver it is a webapp (and not an App) and it is easier for them to view it. Apps sometimes need minimal capacity on mobile phones, next-generation phones, use more battery and data. It's something that drivers value a lot,” explains Daniel.

Email and SMS notifications and alerts build trust with the customer and thus reduce failed deliveries substantially. Thanks to the platform, customers can be sure that their products will arrive at their destination.

“The speed of planning daily routes allows us to look at other business opportunities, for example, adding more customers or outsourcing to other companies.”

Regarding this time savings, Daniel comments: “It is something that we have found that the ease and usability of the platform is opening up the field for us to create an additional line of business to create routes for other customers, other companies that don't have the time or prefer to outsource the service. Otherwise, without this extra time, it would be very difficult for us to venture into other types of businesses.”

Tugou found a solution for their route planning and optimization that provided them with concrete savings in costs and time. This translates into improved productivity and business expansion.

See the results they obtained by optimizing delivery with SmartMonkey:

• -15% fuel: effect of savings on travel
• -25% reduction in unit travel
• -60% planning time
• -33% fleet: thanks to the optimization of the platform that allows you to make the same deliveries with fewer vehicles
• -55% investment: lower platform cost for the same benefits or features. (in a single module, without having to pay extra).

If you too want to reduce costs and save fuel Try SmartMonkey free for 10 days.

Watch the video of the case told by his operations manager Daniel Campos and his business manager Henri Malleux:

If you want to know other success stories, I recommend reading A La Casa Delivery in Chile.

From entrepreneurs to SMEs: how A La Casa Delivery began distributing its own products out of necessity and today it has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs from all over Chile. From market need to a growing business.

In 2019, Angela and Ignacio moved to Chile and began selling their products. Little by little they grew and came to make more than 20 deliveries per day. At that time and after trying different transport companies, they discovered that they were not satisfied with the delivery services available in their region. They didn't offer the service that their products required and saw the possibility of differentiating themselves by offering a better delivery service, so they decided to hire a person to make their own deliveries. The birth of a business out of its own need.

Over the months, they began to offer other entrepreneurs the service of home delivery with their delivery person. Thus, almost in the midst of the 2020 pandemic, it emerged A la Casa Delivery, a last-mile courier/delivery company for entrepreneurs and SMEs in Chile.

As quarantine restrictions in Chile increased more and more, the demand for delivery due to online purchases increased considerably, and deliveries per day became almost 600. Ignacio planned routes every night so that he could have it ready in the morning, and this required several hours. That work became unsustainable, inefficient and created a lot of problems. For that reason, they looked for a tool that could simplify their route planning work, which Ignacio did manually every day. After analyzing several alternatives, they discovered Routal.

After a demo, they started using the platform and solved their doubts thanks to the videos and articles from Routal. In just a few days they implemented the tool and started using it on a daily basis. Planning routes became a job of just a few minutes for Ignacio. In addition, I could obtain all the information in real time about the vehicles on the road and thus be able to resolve any incident that arises.

With the new addition of direct communication with the customer through SMS notifications, they were able to give more visibility to the recipient and thus reduce the number of failed deliveries. This directly influenced customer satisfaction, improving the score in the surveys that are sent after each delivery made.

Como A la Casa Delivery, hundreds of SMEs that benefit from the implementation of a digital solution for route planning and optimization, offering a better, more efficient and environmentally friendly service. If you are in charge of logistics for a small, medium or large company, we can help you digitize your operations in a few minutes, so that you can use your time on other more important tasks to boost your business.

Click here if you want to try SmartMonkey's Planner free for 10 days

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Do you want to switch to an electric vehicle but are not sure yet? We can help you make the transition easier than you think

By December 2023, all municipalities in Spain with more than 50,000 inhabitants must have Low Emission Zones (ZBE). This presents a challenge for all logistics companies that carry out daily distribution work in the country's cities. Many of their vehicles will become obsolete and their routes will have to be modified, they will have to adapt their fleet and migrate to more efficient vehicles such as electric vehicles.

“If low-emission zones are going to be mandatory and logistics are being sought to become increasingly sustainable... why aren't companies yet adopting electric vehicles for their operation?”

The answer is “the costs”. At first glance you may think that the purchase price of the new vehicle is much higher, but the main reason that prevents the adoption of these vehicles is the cost of changing the way you manage your company's daily operations. Making management changes is always complicated, especially when we have been doing things the same way for many years.

When companies decide to switch to an electric fleet, their distribution routes can no longer be the same. Why? For the autonomy of electric vehicles and their refueling. The routes must be adapted to the new limitations that these cars have together with those of the business. A new restriction added to the already complex route planning that makes many electrification projects dismissed a priori.

Another important point is the charging time of the batteries. Unfortunately, it is not possible to charge the vehicle at the same speed as the liters of diesel flow. You'll think of Tesla SuperChargers, but something little known about EVs is that they have a very limited amount of the number of fast charges they can do over their lifetime. For example, a Tesla Model 3 can only do 200 fast charges over its entire battery life. Therefore, planning charging times will be just as important as another variable to consider.

In situations of maximum availability, 24-hour shifts or continuous work, it will be more difficult to fit this type of vehicle (with current technology), but the vast majority of companies will be able to overcome these limitations and manage them perfectly, as long as it is done in an intelligent way.

A route optimizer may be the solution to this problem. With SmartMonkey you can plan your routes in seconds, incorporating vehicle mileage restrictions and working hours in order to obtain the most efficient routes adapted to electric vehicles (and other fuels). In addition, the optimizer will tell you when you can use fewer vehicles to achieve the same deliveries, and thus make your operation even more sustainable.

A success story is the Palliative Care Team (C2P2) at the Hospital Sant Joan de Déu. This equipment has electric vehicles and combustion vehicles. Because of their operations, they visit patients more than 200 km from the hospital, but the large volume is concentrated in a relatively short radius of ~50 km. Being able to limit routes according to the vehicle's range is allowing them to avoid being “strapped” or to greatly limit the use of electric vehicles when in doubt, with the increase in CO2 emissions. One less problem to consider. Now we plan routes in minutes with total confidence and from the hospital's control center they can track operations in real time.

Let us help you with the change: try Routalkey for free for 10 days and you'll see how you can improve your operations by introducing electric vehicles to your fleet (and drivers will thank you).

Many educational entities choose to provide a school shuttle service for their students. This service can be performed by themselves or outsourced to personnel transport companies. If you are the logistics manager of a student transport company, you will know that in Spain the Real Decree 443/2001 of April 27 points out that the maximum length of travel by school transport cannot exceed one hour, so it is essential that students spend as little time as possible on transport, and that routes are efficient in terms of costs, time and distance.

They have recently been Published studies which correlate long trips to get to school with worse academic performance. Mainly because of reduced hours of sleep and less exercise to get to school. Sometimes the distance from children's homes to school makes it impossible to walk or ride a bicycle, so reducing travel times as much as possible is a priority.

The best way to plan transportation stops and minimize travel times is to use a route optimizer. An optimizer allows you to plan your routes in minutes, and thus achieve a significant reduction in travel times and even reduce the number of vehicles to be used.

It is also essential to have visibility of your operations, to be able to see in real time where the vehicles are located and obtain reports of the number of canceled stops, with their reasons, number of kilometers traveled, duration, etc.

Although school routes tend to be recurring, day by day there are changes in the number of students who demand the service, either due to a change in extracurricular activities or due to absenteeism. The number or size of vehicles to be used for the route may also vary. That is why it is necessary to suppleness and a platform that is plain easy to use and easy to implement.

3 ways to make school transport management more efficient:

• Optimize routes
• Get real-time information about the operation
• Reduced costs, time and distance

In SmartMonkey we help public transport companies with a quick and practical solution in planning student transport routes. In minutes you will have the route optimized, you will be able to view the operation in real time, inform families continuously, obtain reports on important metrics for your operation.

Its implementation is very fast, you only need the data of your vehicles and the directions of the stops, and the optimizer will suggest the most effective routes for you in just a few minutes.

Let yourself be helped and try Routal free for 10 days at routal.com

Numerous studies show that it is up to 7 times more expensive to attract new customers than to keep existing ones. Therefore, taking care of the relationship with our client base is a better investment for our company, according to the specialized agency. Demandforce.

And how can we keep our customers? If your company is part of the logistics sector, keep reading, because we have a lot to tell you that will interest you.

Delivery times: the great logistical challenge

Surely it has happened to you too: you buy something online that you need immediately, but delivery times are a real nightmare.

It is nothing new to emphasize that the logistics sector is one of the most competitive and most competitive considering the operations of large companies, who offer increasingly shorter delivery times, of even hours. For this reason, offering an agile delivery service is currently one of the biggest differentiations and the main objective for any logistics company.

And now surely you have doubts: and how do I do it? Below we will explain the 3 essential techniques to optimize and improve your delivery times.

Techniques to reduce delivery times

Optimize routes

Route optimization will be your best weapon to reduce delivery times to a minimum.

For the route optimization prior planning will be essential: defining the total number of stops to be made, establishing a specific schedule or even detailing restrictions such as weight or volume in each vehicle. All these characteristics of our delivery route, if we take them into account at the time of planning, will help us to result in a customized route adapted to the operational needs of our company.

Once we have strategic planning, it will be time to optimize our route. We understand that a route is optimal and, therefore, is optimized, when the result is efficient in terms of time and mileage. Incorporating route optimization software in this step will be essential to have efficient routes, since using artificial intelligence it will effectively calculate in a matter of seconds what is the best route we can take. All of this will help reduce delivery time by more than 30% with respect to other routes.

Incorporate technology into your operating process

Digital logistics transformation is already a reality and, therefore, it is essential not to be left behind and incorporate it into our operations.

In order to be able to adapt to the needs of our commercial activity together with the technological requirements that are increasing at the social level, it is essential to include specialized software that not only improves the efficiency of our daily activities but also increases the level of competitiveness of our company compared to others.

An example of technological inclusion is the incorporation of a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) in our company. CRMs are software specialized in a set of practices, business strategies and technologies aimed at fostering an efficient relationship with our customers.

Communicate with your customers

In relation to the above, with regard to incorporating specialized software into our operations, it is also essential to have specialized programs in the direct communication with our users.

Not having direct and effective communication with your customers and even with the drivers and delivery people themselves is one of the biggest mistakes in logistics. Being able to enjoy direct communication channels that allow our users to know when they will receive a package, to verify that a service has been carried out or what phase of the operation it is in is key to effective deliveries and also to the satisfaction of all parties.

With SmartMonkey Planner you can count on each and every one of the techniques that will reduce your delivery times from day one. Do you want to try it? Now you can do it and for 10 days for free!

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It might seem that in logistics there is only one path and that this is as simple as programming-deliver. Nothing could be further from reality, logistics encompasses a lot and since “a lot” is understood a multitude of types of operations, each with its own different requirements.

Next, we'll take an in-depth look at two of the most popular operations: on-demand deliveries and scheduled deliveries.

On-Demand Deliveries

On-demand deliveries, in English known as On Demand, are one of the most demanding operations in recent years, further boosting and strengthening the last mile.

On-demand deliveries cannot be planned, since they are operational and require a minimum of time from the time the order is placed until the delivery is made.

It's Friday night and you want to treat yourself with food Fast food. You call the restaurant and place the order. As soon as the food is ready, the delivery person will take your order home. This is an example of on-demand delivery.

With the example mentioned above, it is easy to see that at certain times when the restaurant has peak times when receiving orders, it will be difficult to cope with the growing demand, since making several deliveries on demand simultaneously is really complex.

Therefore, when delivering on demand, certain metrics should be taken into account, such as hours or days of the week if we follow the example of the restaurant (it will be essential to observe if orders increase on weekends and after 8:00 p.m.) and, on the other hand, on Mondays at noon they decrease). These metrics will help us manage our own resources, since this way we can predict if we will need to increase the number of delivery people hired on weekend evenings and decrease it during the week.

Scheduled deliveries

Scheduled deliveries are shipments scheduled in advance for a specific time interval.

In this case, and as an example, we could transport ourselves to our wedding day. We get in touch with a tailor to make us a tailor-made suit. After several tests our suit is ready. Now, we only have to tell our tailor what day and at what time we will pick up the suit so that it is ready for the link.

As seen with the example, in scheduled deliveries, a service is offered in advance with the customer so that the order arrives on a specific day and in a specific time slot. The customer selects the date and time interval in which he wants to receive his order.

This mode of delivery allows customers to monitor their shipment in real time, so they will feel connected at all times and will be able to control both the status of the order, its location and the exact time of delivery.

According to the portal Ibertransit, scheduled deliveries are an increasingly common service in large cities where deliveries are made within a maximum period of 48 hours and with a zero delivery cost for the customer. Despite the increase in on-demand deliveries, it should be noted that it is not yet an extended service, since they represent 20% of total deliveries.

Make deliveries on demand vs. scheduled deliveries

The way in which we operate on demand and scheduled deliveries is completely different. In fact, so much so, that it is very difficult for companies to be able to carry out both operations simultaneously, since the requirements are very different.

The main difference between on-demand deliveries and scheduled deliveries is that the latter allow you to add different customers in the same vehicle and, therefore, be more efficient in optimizing time and resources. On the other hand, in on-demand deliveries, it is so dynamic that it is very difficult to be able to add several deliveries on the same route.

As mentioned above, in on-demand deliveries, the planning process requires a predictive pretext on which to base these demand predictions with data from previous dates. With these predictions, an approximate number of vehicles needed or the minimum inventory level required will be established.

In the case of scheduled deliveries, companies give customers the flexibility to schedule their own deliveries. In this sense, the predictive element ceases to make sense, since the number of deliveries to be made is known in advance. In scheduled deliveries, the inputs that must be planned are the number of vehicles needed to carry out the deliveries, which orders to group (batch deliveries) or in what order the orders should be delivered (make optimized routes).

At SmartMonkey, we are constantly developing to empower the last mile. Our customers can more effectively determine where, when and how they want to receive their shipments. Decide for yourself with our free trial period.

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