Omnitracs' Road Ahead blog

Planning Daily Deliveries? Here Are 5 Tips to Spring Clean Your Data

Tara
Tara Cellinese
Senior Marketing Communications Manager

Last week’s snowy Northeast conditions made those who deliver product acutely aware that spring was not yet upon us. But today marks the first day of spring, and you know what that means — it’s time to clean house. Don’t let old transportation data keep you from being productive this spring (or ever). Make it a practice to refresh your data on a regular basis so that your deliveries can be more effective.

Here are five tips that we gathered from Omnitracs consultants and routing experts:

  1. Delete old customers

    Do you have customers in your database even after the orders have stopped coming in? No matter how you’re planning deliveries, cleaning old customers out of your database can help you be more efficient. If you use routing software, though, you can check standard routes for companies that haven’t ordered by using the last order date. 
     

  2. Review equipment and worker cost factors

    Have any new trucks or trailers been brought into the fleet over the past year? Just because new equipment was brought in and paperwork was filled out doesn’t mean that the costs associated with it was accounted for in the routing system. Make sure to update your equipment list in your route planning software.

    Beyond just equipment, many fleet managers check for cost factors at the worker level. If using detailed accurate cost at the worker level, you will need to account for whether workers’ pay has increased or changed in the past year. 
     

  3. Talk to your drivers
    Customer time windows can change, and sometimes only your drivers know about it. Make a point to talk to drivers and account for any changes in time windows. There’s no sense in building a route plan if it won’t be followed properly. Sometimes a little extra communication is all that’s needed to improve a plan.
     
  4. Update geocodes
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    If you’re seeing unknown location stops in your routing software, it’s probably time to update geocodes. You can do this by reviewing the geocode status on daily orders, ensuring your active orders have an accurate geocode. 

    Users of Omnitracs’ business intelligence tool, Insight, can drill down to the root cause of routing inefficiencies.

    Fleet managers can begin by looking for severe cases — for example, stops at unknown locations that last greater than one hour. Addressing unknown stops can increase route plan accuracy, and help reduce unplanned overtime and missed time windows. 
     

  5. Review actual service times
    In Omnitracs’ Roadnet and Roadnet Anywhere software, users can run the Service Time Updater, which captures more accurate historical arrival and departure times. Service time is reviewed using an algorithm to create a new fixed and variable service time. The bottom line is this: the software makes routing more accurate.

 

These are just some of many ways to spring clean your routing data. To learn more about how Roadnet Anywhere can help, visit http://www.omnitracs.com/products/saas-vehicle-routing