Be Proactive: Plan Strategically

Traditionally, delivery territory design processes rely heavily on manual geographical segmentation and inefficient planning processes. Fortunately, route planners and fleet managers can shed these inefficiencies and support their strategic delivery planning efforts by combining innovative technologies with time-tested techniques. 

With that in mind, let’s explore what strategic delivery planning is, why it matters to distributors and wholesalers, and how you can execute your planning strategy. 

What Is Strategic Delivery Planning?

Also known as territory planning, strategic delivery planning is the process of dividing a region into smaller territories or zones that are then assigned to a specific driver. 

The premise behind delivery territory mapping is to help businesses optimize resource utilization and allocation when making planned, recurring deliveries to a stable group of client accounts. As a secondary benefit, assigning each territory a dedicated driver promotes client loyalty, as recipients will grow accustomed to interacting with the same individual each week.

Why Distributors and Wholesalers Optimize Territory Alignment

Using strategic delivery planning to optimize territory management is vital for distributors and wholesalers. These processes facilitate coverage optimization, meaning decision-makers can allocate the appropriate number of drivers to each territory or group of accounts. That, in turn, ensures that deliveries are made on a consistent basis and provides clients with the continuity they need to avoid shortages and serve their patrons. 

How to Execute Strategic Delivery Planning

• Identify Your “Why”: The first step in strategic delivery planning is to determine what you hope to accomplish by revamping your current shipping framework. Once you know what goals you want to accomplish, you can then create a plan to achieve them.
• Leverage Your Data: Next, gather delivery-efficiency data and use it to specify how many drop-offs each driver can make during a given shift, then engage in geographical segmentation, grouping clients into territories. Ensure that a single driver can serve each territory. If any group is too large to be served by one driver, break it into two or redistribute the clients into existing ones. 
• Use the Right Tools: The final step is to adopt the right software. The ideal strategic delivery planner platform will feature an intuitive, easy-to-use interface, but make sure that the platform allows you to import existing territory data, manage it within the software, and effortlessly analyze the efficacy of your strategy. 
• Adjust as Needed: After your plan and software are in place, continuously monitor driver performance and revamp territories when necessary to further bolster delivery efficiency. 

Win at Territory Management with Wise Systems Strategic Planner

Strategic Planner from Wise Systems enables route planners and managers to quickly build efficient delivery-territory plans. They can leverage the technology to optimize coverage and geographical segmentation via a clean and simple user interface. 

This innovative platform enables you to improve resource utilization and allocation, guide decision-making processes, and improve consistency for your valued clients by:

• Importing existing territory maps
• Moving customers from territory to territory
• Ingesting current maps or plans
• Creating repeatable route plans
• Consolidating account data for mapping purposes
• Editing servicing patterns and routes
• Relaying plan results to OMS for use in Route Planner

In short, the Strategic Planner from Wise Systems simplifies regional delivery planning, paving the way for customer experience optimization. 

Organizational leaders, fleet managers, and route planners interested in elevating their area analysis and planning capabilities should explore the Strategic Delivery Planner from Wise Systems today.

Visit wisesystems.com/strategicplanner for more information, then reach out to schedule time to learn more.