The online buying behaviors of customers have changed a lot over the years. In today's world, people expect cheap and quick delivery, irrespective of where they are located, leading to a huge growth in the last mile delivery industry. Therefore, businesses must find ways to increase efficiency and reduce costs to finance their shipping logistics to remain competitive.

This largely comes down to how a business handles last-mile logistics. The global last-mile delivery market is expected to reach $121.2 billion by 2030. So, for an organization to be successful in the new digital market conditions, it has to boost the efficiency of the last-mile delivery service.

What is last-mile delivery?

Last-mile logistics or last-mile delivery refers to the transportation of products from the closest distribution point to the end location, typically the business or home of a client. Last-mile delivery logistics solutions focus on transporting and delivering the products as economically, accurately, and swiftly as feasible.

This is an essential and expensive step in every delivery process requiring extra manpower, equipment, and time. Businesses must make this process efficient to meet customer demand for quick shipment, particularly in retail, food, and eCommerce.

What is a last-mile delivery company?

A last-mile delivery business or last-mile delivery company offers last-mile delivery services to businesses in different sectors like retail, eCommerce, and food industries. These companies have different processes to ensure the products reach the customer's end without delay or damage. The deliveries are properly tracked, and protocols are employed to prevent delivery exceptions or wrong deliveries.

Why is last-mile delivery important?

Last-mile delivery solutions form one of the most important parts of the logistics solution in an organization for a variety of reasons, including the following:

Customers prefer quick deliveries

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the growth of online shopping and brought great changes to customer demands and expectations. The pandemic resulted in enhanced delivery speeds, which are now challenging to reverse. Now customers expect products to arrive at their doors faster, and fulfilling this goal necessitates efficient last-mile delivery operations.

Last-mile errors are expensive.

Companies can incur many unnecessary costs when business executives fail to adopt appropriate last-mile software. Even if everything goes according to plan, last-mile deliveries account for an organization's shipping expenses. So, when failed deliveries happen, this can rise to an exorbitant amount.

Why is last-mile delivery so expensive?

Businesses handling last-mile delivery operations may need to fulfill hundreds of orders in one day. Deliveries are punishingly complicated due to the quantity and diversity of end locations, not to mention factors like weather, mechanical failures, and traffic. Several external and internal factors and last-mile delivery challenges make the last-mile delivery process expensive. These include the following:

Improper route planning

Drivers are more likely to go off-route during their delivery routine when there are more stops in between. Typically, poor route planning leads to fewer deliveries. Though these off-route miles make up a relatively minor portion of overall miles traveled, when businesses expand their delivery activities, fuel costs, and related vehicle upkeep can soon mount up. Businesses can use Mojro's PlanWyse to optimize their routes depending on daily demands efficiently. Also, the 6D optimization model offered by PlanWyse can assist companies in optimizing the cost, distance, time, and activity quickly and effectively.

Extended road times

Individual deliveries necessitate vehicles to negotiate crowded city streets, escalating idle time and fuel and maintenance expenses. Additionally, drivers may be required to ply at slower speeds, reducing total fuel efficiency and increasing costs. Using Mojro's PlanWyse, business managers can identify the optimal package delivery route, thereby reducing fuel and time losses.

Demand for transparent and flexible delivery windows

Companies are expected to cover the additional transportation costs due to unsuccessful deliveries when customers are not present at the end location. Costs associated with unsuccessful deliveries will rise as a business expands the capabilities of its fleet to meet growing demand.

Businesses will be able to prevent missed or incorrect deliveries by using Mojro's ExecuteWyse, which offers real-time data about delivery status and track the movement of vehicles. This will inform the managers about the expected delivery time of packages and make decisions about route optimization accordingly.

Address resolution

Incorrect deliveries are a major cause of mounting last-mile delivery expenses. Mojro's GeoWyse offers NLP-based real-time geocoding that can enhance delivery accuracy by identifying the correct address. It also has a precision analyzer with iterative abilities that can refine the geocoding ability, thereby helping to resolve addresses accurately.

How to improve last-mile delivery

The following tips can help improve last-mile delivery:

• Businesses may better comprehend the different elements of last-mile delivery processes and implement modifications to continuously optimize it by centralizing all important data in one place.
• Companies can use route optimization, a technology that uses data to identify the most efficient route, to optimize their delivery routes based on the data they have. This can reduce their costs, increase customer satisfaction and reduce inconvenience for customers.
• Companies can allow customers to choose from different delivery windows and improve customer satisfaction.
• Businesses can allow their clients to track not just their orders but also the vehicles their packages are being delivered on and communicate with the driver through SMS.
• Companies can collaborate with 3PL vendors for order fulfillment. This has several advantages, including improved customer satisfaction, decreased overhead increases, and decreased shipping costs.

Future of last-mile delivery

Numerous trends are expected to shape the future of last-mile delivery processes, including the following:

• Rapid order fulfilments with same-day and even same-hour deliveries.
• Improved traceability of delivery vehicles and packages with delivery logistics software incorporated with track and trace functionalities.
• More businesses may be interested in starting in-house last-mile delivery services.
• Though not widely used yet, drones and robots can also be incorporated into delivery processes soon.

Conclusion

Last Mile Delivery

Last-mile delivery is one of the most important parts of logistics. Therefore businesses need to improve their last-mile delivery processes. This can be made easy using last-mile logistics companies like Mojro that use leading-edge technologies like AI and ML to eliminate supply chain inefficiencies, offer real-time visibility, and optimize logistics planning processes.

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