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Customer Story:
Nature's Menu
Challenge
As Natures Menu grew rapidly, their existing delivery scheduling processes couldn't keep up.
Back-office administration was consuming around three hours per person per day, and communicating accurate delivery times to customers required constant manual contact with drivers.
The business needed a solution that could scale with their fleet and integrate with both their telematics and CRM systems.
Approach
Access MaxOptra was selected following a rigorous evaluation process, recommended as part of a total solution alongside TomTom telematics fitted to all delivery vehicles.
The integrated platform gave the scheduling team real-time visibility of all vehicles, dynamic ETA recalculation as routes progressed, and instant access to planned vs actual delivery data.
Results
- The fleet grew from 25 to 37 vehicles - a 48% increase - while maintaining service levels.
- Back-office administration time was reduced by approximately three hours per person per day.
- Customer communication improved significantly, with dynamic ETAs replacing manual driver calls.
- The business has since seen a fourfold increase in fleet size over its time with Access MaxOptra.
Challenges
In 2013 Natures Menu had a fleet of 25 dual compartment temperature controlled delivery vans delivering customer orders from four depots across the UK. With a rapidly expanding customer base, maintaining a high level of customer service and delivery were key objectives.
Natures Menu had no way of tracking deliveries. This resulted in their customer services team having to spend a significant amount of time contacting drivers to update the customers on any delays or issues rather than being pro-active in their approach. Having immediate access to delivery information data, such as expected time of delivery and any delays, was seen as crucial to success in the market as well as providing a competitive advantage.
To do this Natures Menu needed a system that was able to quickly and easily schedule delivery jobs, with track and trace functionality. This allowed Natures Menu to plan vehicle capacities, routes and expected delivery times as well as immediately respond to customer queries.
Solution
After a rigorous selection process Natures Menu shortlisted three vendors, including Access MaxOptra. This was based on a recommendation from Independent Tracking as part of a total solution, which included fitting TomTom telematics to all their delivery vehicles.
Natures Menu made the decision work with us due to:
- Quality of the system and the team that provided the solution
- Simplicity of use
- Real time, dynamic scheduling and routing of orders
- Dynamic Track and Trace to provide real time accurate delivery times for improved customer service
- Depth of understanding of the logistics business and programming
- Ability to seamlessly integrate with drivers TomTom devices, the company website and CRM systems
Having an easy to use, intuitive system providing immediate availability of planned vs actual delivery data has been a huge benefit to Natures Menu in their daily communications with customers.
Access MaxOptra has enable Natures Menu to advise customers of any changes to the expected delivery times by dynamically recalculating ETA’s from the real time TomTom vehicle location information as the day progresses. The scheduling team can now see at a glance the real-time status of orders and management can now make improvements to driver’s performance based on the intelligent reporting functionality the system offers.
The outcome is that scheduling staff are able to quickly and easily plan, schedule and route jobs, streamlining business processes and allowing ad hoc orders to be taken throughout the day.
Results
By integrating Access Maxoptra into the business, Natures Menu has seen the following benefits:
- Reduction of 3 hours and associated operational costs per person per day in back office administration and time spent on contacting drivers / customers.
- Considerably reduced mileage and fuel consumption through sophisticated scheduling plus improved driver performance and discipline.
- Proactive customer service through tracking of their orders and updating of specific delivery times leading to improved customer satisfaction.
- Increasing the number of orders the company can manage through enabling later cut-off times for same day orders and handling of later ad hoc orders.
- Improved business efficiency through having detailed operational and management reporting in place and greater insight into day-to-day performance
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