UK: Maxoptra’s dynamic multi-drop route planning software is helping Sandown Mercedes-Benz to plan and complete deliveries of spare parts to garages across the south of England. Operating from a centralized hub in Basingstoke, the Mercedes-Benz dealership offers trade customers two deliveries a day and completes in excess of 1,000 deliveries a week. Integrated with in-cab navigation devices from TomTom, the Maxoptra cloud-based multi-drop planning solution is already saving Sandown time and money whilst improving customer service.
“In 2016 we opened our trade hub, centralizing the supply of parts to trade customers,” commented Charlotte Grummitt, Key Account Manager at Sandown Mercedes-Benz. “This created better parts availability, as we vastly increased our stock width, and allowed us to make more frequent deliveries, therefore improving our service. However, as planning was undertaken manually, either by the parts advisors or the drivers themselves, this was not an efficient use of resources.”
Sandown Mercedes-Benz now operates a team of ten delivery drivers from the centralized trade hub in Basingstoke, in addition to dealership based drivers and advisers. Using Maxoptra, the daily order list is processed according to the number of drivers available and the hours they have available to drive. Maxoptra is also integrated with the retailer’s in-cab TomTom Pro 5250 units for navigation and vehicle tracking.
“We wanted a solution that could look at the resource we had and tell us how best to use it, and Maxoptra does exactly that. It also gives us an expandable, future-proof solution to support predicted growth and underpin any changes in the business,” continued Grummitt.
“Since implementing Maxoptra, we have reduced the time taken to plan our daily deliveries and reduced the time taken to complete the delivery schedule. In fact, in some days we have been able to stand down a driver, giving us a resource to use in other parts of the operation, for example in the warehouse.
