The world is shifting to online purchasing of items, goods and many other services. However, the delivery of online goods has inclined drastically. This gives rise to another problem for delivery companies in the form of last-mile delivery. Apart from being a problem, last-mile delivery is also a final and vital part of delivering the packages well.
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Last-mile delivery refers to the transportation of goods from the final hub to the delivery location such as to a person’s house or at any address. It is expected that within a few more years the e-commerce will encounter the highest sales growth by the rate of 21% which is nearly 3.5 trillion dollars.
Hence, the significance of the last mile delivery is going to enhance even more in the near future. This is the reason that companies are now in the race to find the best last mile solution to tackle the challenges surrounding it and to provide better services.
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Solving challenges with Last-mile delivery logistics solution
With the increasing number of orders for e-commerce websites, companies are desperately looking for various delivery methods. In which the last mile delivery software is one of the solutions considered by the e-commerce field.
However, the most common methods of delivering product used by companies are like, 68% are using direct to home service, 23% by the post office, postal services point has gained 16% ration in delivering products to its customers.
While the other methods such as delivery parcel at office or workplace, courier’s parcel shop. Parcel lockers, alternative address, are rarely used methods.
Disruption of Vehicle law in the last mile delivery
To begin with, e-commerce companies are operating in various countries or in states as they all have different rules and regulations of vehicles and delivery. To tackle this issue, companies might have to follow rules and regulations such as:
- Size of a vehicle that can be allowed in certain areas
- Specific weight of vans
- Rules of parking
- Noise restrictions areas
- Car driver’s permit of drive vehicle or to work for a specific time
These are some of the basic and main requirements that companies might have to keep in mind while considering the last-mile delivery solutions.
No transparency over delivery and delivery man
With the increase in the number of deliveries, in the past few years, companies have introduced the number of vehicles such as vans, cars, tractors, and motorcycles. However, all this mess of vehicles often creates various problems, such as no control over retailers and delivery vehicles and drivers.
Whereas, companies need special and advanced tools to track their delivery vehicles and drivers and also the customers can check the exact location of their parcel.
Consumers might have experience with delay and damaged product
Well, it is very crucial for companies to maintain the consumer’s experience and loyalty. Whereas, the delays and damaged product may lead to disruption in a good experience.
The reason behind this is simple, a bad tie-up of e-commerce companies with third party services for the last mile solution may result in 20 to 30% of products to be returned or 10% got damaged due to various reasons.
However, the main reason for the return of items by consumers are;
It is seen that 20% of consumers receive damaged products, 22% product doesn’t match the exact product, whereas, 35% of people return it for some other reason. And 92% of people buy items again if return policy would be easy.
What is the actual solution?
Most of the companies are developing advanced methods for this challenge including the focus on the automation industry. For instance, companies are developing the best last-mile delivery software along with Drive AI which is one of the highly anticipated methods in which car drive-by itself with AI, but somewhere it isn’t able to help incorporate this the challenge for companies.
The reason is simple, as AI drive may lead to uplift the transportation cost due to several reasons such as traffic problems, unknown delivery locations, changing several routes, which not only increases cost but also may delay the delivery.
No doubt, the ready-made solution is not available for this challenge. Whereas another solution could be, the companies using third party logistics services to deliver their goods must create their own software and AI to meet the requirement such as;
- Solution can be fast and secure
- System must provide real-time statics
- Delivery time must be forecasted accurately
However, in order to succeed in the last mile delivery software, the start-up would be of a specific niche, as it always becomes hard and difficult to cover the large scale with delivery solutions. Companies should hire some of the AI and software developing companies that always focus on a logistics software solution.
Logistic software would straightway focus on establishing the best tracking process, optimizing warehouses, integrate garmented, disintermediate shipping, etc. It will also help in the efficient management of data flows which further improvement in the customization, alerts and reminders, integration of this third party.
However, the return of goods problems would also get solved with the return management software. This software could help the companies to refine the return and refund process. So that customers can only return or refund specific items with some strong reasons and issues.
Furthermore, the cloud-based platform and 12Return would be a fine solution to tackle this situation which can act as a bridge between retailer and customer which further may lead to track shipment at the control of the return policies.
Author Bio:
Noman Shaikh is a Digital Marketing Head at Fixlastmile which is known for developing top-notch route tracking software. He believes in sharing his strong knowledge base with leaned concentration on entrepreneurship and business.
