How to find money using mobile logistics apps

Going from paper delivery tickets to mobile is “found money”

Move from level 1 to level 2 in the Bulk Distributor Maturity Model

Most companies using paper delivery tickets have grown to accept them, but in reality, switching to a mobile app is equivalent to the move that retailers made decades ago when they replaced “price stickers” with barcodes and installed registers with integrated barcode scanners to read them.

While no one questions the need for a cash register and scanners in retail, many bulk distributors are still perfectly content giving a driver $10k in bulk products and asking them to “write down what you delivered so we can bill it.”

Mobile logistics systems are an investment just like cash registers are for retail stores, and like cash registers, mobile logistics systems enforce standard processes and provide visibility into key delivery metrics.

5 ways money can be reclaimed by going mobile

Invoice processing – On average, it costs $12.90-$15 to process a manual invoice with the highest cost going up to $40. Automated invoicing lowers that cost to $3.50/invoice. That amounts to a savings of roughly $360/ week in invoice processing if a driver is writing 6 invoices daily. Going mobile saves manual processing time because you no longer have to process and re-key paper invoices.
Route compliance – When given paper, drivers complete orders in any sequence and there is no visibility into time to service, start times, end times, order sequence, order status, etc. With a mobile app, drivers are given a planned schedule with time and distance. With this increased level of visibility, you automatically get higher compliance which can be a 5-15% reduction in total transportation costs. A conservative savings estimate is 30+ mins/trip and 10 miles/trip amounting to $75/week in labor and $50/week in loaded mileage ($2/mile) for a total of $120/week.daily. Going mobile saves manual processing time because you no longer have to process and re-key paper invoices.
Shorten Order to Cash (OTC) – by going from paper to electronic invoicing, you skip all the manual processing and can shorten the number of days to invoice by 7-10. Some ExxonMobil customers have been able to invoice buyback accounts the next day versus the average of 21 days (20 day savings). Shortening the OTC process impacts Days Sales outstanding (DSO). DSO is the average length of time invoices remain unpaid. If you have access to an investment that returns 5% and have a $2M average receivables balance, you would save $100k/year by reducing your DSO 10 days. Apruve talks a lot about DSO if you’d like more information.

Inventory control – The quantities of materials loaded onto trucks can be tracked against what is delivered to customers so you always know the inventory level on a truck. If the quantity retained at the end of the trip does not match customer deliveries, the driver must account for that discrepancy. Mobile apps can’t necessarily prevent theft, but they can certainly monitor it, inform you of any misappropriation, and discourage the act—similar to a security camera watching a cash register. Better inventory control could easily prevent theft of up to $100k/year from one driver alone. Tracking hose flushes and load vs. delivered variances, as well as verifying tanks to prevent over delivery can conservatively identify variances of 5 gal/day. At $10/gal, that is $300/week. Without mobile technology, who knows how much you are actually losing. *
Product integrity – By scanning a barcode on each tank delivery, drivers ensure the product they are pumping matches the tank and the last product delivered, which guards against product integrity issues whether you face product integrity issues weekly or quarterly. With only 1 issue/year/truck you would save $5k/incident alone from remediation cost savings, assuming there are no legal costs related to the customer discovering this problem. See how our mobile app reduces product integrity issues.

There are many softer benefits to going mobile. The ability to email a delivery receipt means customers perceive more professionalism and accuracy, and don’t have to worry about discrepancies between the paper ticket they signed and what the billing clerk enters on the invoice.

Here are some other benefits, beyond cash savings, that increase customer focus and provide operational visibility:

emailed proof of delivery receipts
real-time truck location and inventory reporting
customer notification of pending deliveries
add/change orders on an active route

Conclusion

Going mobile should be an intuitive decision. With just a few days for relatively simple set-up, the results can be a 10x cost-savings versus paperless delivery and routing. Accelerating the Order To Cash (OTC) process, avoiding re-keying mistakes, reducing contaminated deliveries with barcode verification, building a tank database to forecast orders, and having visibility into your delivery metrics lays the groundwork for data-driven logistics.

For a typical fuels and lubricants distributor, the conservative business case can be pretty compelling. Using the data above, a 10-truck operation could save more than $500k/year.

Area	Annual Savings	Notes
Invoice Processing	$17,280	6 invoices/day/truck
Route Compliance	$5,760	30 mins & 10 miles/trip
Inventory Control	$14,400	5 gal/day @ $10/gal
Product Integrity	$5,000	prevent 1 issue/yr/truck
Shorten OTC	$100,000	applied across ALL trucks
TOTAL – 10 trucks	$524,400

Our goRoam mobile app for bulk distributors can help you find money that is hidden in your logistics system whether you have an existing legacy mobile app or are still using paper. Interested in knowing more? Contact us to have someone walk you through what this would look like for your company.

*When inventory control feature is used with our electronic meter integration or our truck scale integration, we further restrict drivers’ ability to manipulate inventory. And you can see any time a driver manually enters or changes a value.

from Apps for last mile logistics | routing and dispatch https://ift.tt/2Nex1JV

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