Route planning

Lead the way with the right route planning tool for you and your business

/0 Comments/in , , , , , , , , , /by

Introduction

Navigating through last-mile delivery offerings can be a daunting task as you figure out which route planning software tool is the most applicable for your team, your business operation needs and budget. When considering Biarri’s Run and Route planning software, there can be a range of important factors to consider, such as:

  • Finding the best tool to reduce your operational costs and improve your bottom line;
  • Purchasing the necessary functionality to streamline current business planning and supply chain management,
  • Identifying gaps within your current operations that could benefit from an automated software solution, as you seek to make technological advancements,
  • Selecting the correct route planning tool that has the capacity to deal with your business intricacies and complexities, such as delivery windows, drop off specifications and vehicle compatibility.

As you work through the finer details of other route planning software providers take a look through our customer profiles to see which one best aligns with you and your business.

Customer Type Summary

Customer ProfilePain Points and Challenges
General ManagerReducing operational costs. Managing day to day to operations
Vice President of Logistics and PlanningMeeting customer demand and ensuring a safe and smooth operation. Supply chain management and refining processes
Digital Transformation ManagerImproving business processes through AI solutions. Simplifying and streamlining procedures
Delivery Schedule PlannerCreating a efficient delivery schedule that meets customer demand

Are you a General Manager?

Biarri’s Run and Route’s first customer profile describes General Managers of medium to large sized organisations (200+ employees). They hold a management position within the organisation – and are charged with overseeing the day to day service and deliveries of their distribution centre. With broad industry experience and academic qualifications, this GM drives strategy and performance across his business in revenue growth, cost reduction, operational efficiency and customer experience. 

As business and demand continues to grow so does the business’s costs; mindful of their bottom line and an eye into the future, they seek alternative options that can aid the delivery scheduling team in being able to meet their customers’ needs by making deliveries on time and on demand, and reducing the man hours spent on creating schedules through old hand method ways like Excel and Google maps.


Does this sound familiar? If so, our Run and Route tool helps solve the above challenges by creating an optimal and efficient set of routes, reducing drivers’ travel distance and accelerating the delivery process.

Are you a Vice President of Logistics and Planning?

Aligned closely with the General Manager, Scopta’s Run and Route next profile holds an executive role within the company and leads the logistics and planning functions. Tasked with ensuring the quality, efficiency and scalability of the supply chain, the Vice President of Logistics and Planning is constantly looking for systems, processes and technical solutions to gain and maintain competitive advantage. 

Overseeing the supply chain processes of a large distribution centre of a goods company, they take a great deal of interest in business processes and delivery outcomes and performance, with a desire to stay at the forefront of the industry. Taking a measured approach to how best to improve the service and delivery of their goods, they are on the constant lookout for solutions that can streamline the planning of delivery schedules and achieve efficient and cost effective planning. 

Open to technology advancement, they see the implementation of a route planning software program as a great advantage for route planning for more efficient delivery schedules.

 
Does this sound familiar? If so, our Run and Route tool helps solve the above challenges by being market leaders in route optimisation, and being a functional and agile tool that simplifies the way you plan and deal with last minute adjustments.

Are you a Digital Transformation Officer?

With an eye to the future and a strong understanding of current business operations, our next profile looks to advance the company through digitalisation and with the integration of  artificial intelligence. As a key decision maker with a background in information technology, they are motivated by efficiency and productivity, constantly looking to refine and improve supply chain processes. With a view to automating and digitising where possible, the Digital Transformation Officer sees potential to improve the last-mile delivery planning process, which currently involves a mixture of data sources, manual processes, online mapping tools and excel spreadsheets.  This results in labour intensive processes, a lack of optimisation, barriers to scalability and key personnel risk. 

The Digital Transformation Officer plays a vital role in the continual refinement of these practices, looking to streamline their processes through optimisation as they look for the best route planning software for their business requirements. 


Does this sound familiar? If so, our Run and Route tool helps solve the above challenges through automated route planning solutions. Streamline the way your team plan and organise their trucking fleet, with a single tool containing all the functionality your team needs to deal with your business requirements.

Are you a Delivery Scheduler Planner?

Last but not least, the Delivery Scheduler. They have the critical role of planning the routes and delivery schedules for their 20+ trucking fleet. Equipped with nothing more than a spreadsheet, an online map and vast experience (perhaps having been a delivery driver themselves), they spend the better part of their week organising delivery schedules. 

Motivated by meeting customers’ demand and ensuring deliveries are completed, there are many variables and barriers that they face. Dealing with the complexities of considering delivery windows, driver availability, infrastructure and truck requirements and specific load types, all while making sure delivery schedules are ready by the first delivery is a time-consuming and extremely difficult task when completed by hand. 

Perhaps a route planning software tool could help?

Does this sound familiar? If so, our Run and Route tool helps solve the above challenges through its powerful optimisation engine. Be enabled to do more with a centralised system that deals with complex scenarios and variables, ensuring that you produce not only an error free delivery schedule but an efficient and cost effective set of routes.

Speak to our team now based on your above persona

If any of the following profiles or challenges resonate with you and your business, please reach out to one of our team members to discuss how Biarri’s Run and Route can assist, using the below contact form. 


With a strong understanding of the constraints and challenges last mile delivery and route planning entail, the team behind Biarri’s Run and Route are dedicated to working along side you to improve your business processes and route planning through automation and optimisation.

Run and Route Contact Form

Biarri Workforce New Feature Release: July Edition

/0 Comments/in , , , , , , , , /by

With the end of the Financial year coming to close, and as Businesses continue to adjust to our new normal, the team behind Biarri Workforce continue our commitment to improve and simplify workforce rostering and planning. With our users in mind, our development team has updated and created additional functionality to equip you the user with the necessary tools to improve the way you:

  • View KPI’s and create reporting for exporting;
  • Manage your employees work schedules across multiple rosters 
  • Improve visibility of rosters when planning with simplified user interface functionality and
  • The way employers manage employees fatigue and qualification compliance 

Read on to see how Biarri Workforce continues to simplify and prepare your workforce scheduler to create optimised workforce rosters and work schedules. 

  1. Roster Export Additional Employee Columns  

Reduce confusion and assure your employees with the option to increase your employees visibility with additional ‘Employee Fields’. When downloading or exporting your roster, you have the choice to include or exclude the following employee details from your roster. Better manage your employees’ details with the new employee columns. 

2. Include shifts from non-primary roster

Better manage individual employee rosters by being able to include shifts from non-primary rosters. When downloading rosters, include or exclude shifts from non-primary rosters with Biarri Workforce’s new toggle option. Perfect for employees who work across multiple departments and perform multiple functions, keep track and improve the way you plan and organise their roster.


3. Customisable report titles

Create clearer reports and configure ‘titles’ and ‘subtitles’ before downloading your roster. With the ‘Suggested Titles’ selector – correctly title and label your rosters based on intelligent suggestions.



4. Roster KPI’s – Paid hours/ total days sub totals 

Make more informed decisions with Biarri Workforce’s improved ‘RosterKPI’s’. With the enhanced KPI functionality, users will have the option to view the sub-total paid working hours and total days. Helpful and useful when dealing and managing fatigue, increase your workforce planners and users visibility over working hours, ensuring employee hours do not exceed CBA regulations.

5. Powerful roster view filters

Improve your user experience with the new Biarri Workforce filter options. By clicking on the following ‘filter’ icon dropdown in the ‘Rostering’ tab, your user will now be able to organise and switch views by selecting the necessary filters, creating a more clearer and purposeful roster.

6. Fatigue and Qualification Compliance Reporting 

Found in the ‘Admin’ tab, users will now be able to export fatigue and qualification reports under the ‘Roster Validation’ sub header.
Make compliance and safety a priority by ensuring you have the correct employee with the correct qualification, to perform the necessary tasks. With ‘Roster Validation’ reporting, your Workforce Planners and users will be able to stay up to date with employees who do not satisfy the requirements to perform specific tasks and roles. From alcohol tests to site compliance, roster validation will highlight when employees are in breach of rule specifications outlined.

If you want to know more about any of the features mentioned above, we invite you to leave your contact details in the contact form below and one of our team members will get in touch with you. Or if you want to know more about Biarri Workforce follow this link.

Workforce Contact Form

Changing the landscape of Route Optimisation

/0 Comments/in , , , , , , , /by

Introduction

Getting from point A to point B is a simple enough task to be completed on most devices, through various different apps and software. But what happens when you have to get from point A to point B and now point C with consideration of other factors like availability windows and route preference? Scopta have developed Run and Route a route optimisation software that deals with the complexities of vehicle and delivery routing.

Read on to discover Run and Route and how it is changing route optimisation and vehicle routing.

Scenario

Barry is the Operations Manager at a warehouse depot for a biscuit company and is in charge of the planning and organising of the distribution of goods sold across Sydney. Barry is tasked with delivering 400 orders to be delivered between 20 trucks, exactly 20 orders per truck. For the last 10 years Barry has used a combination of Excel and Google Maps to figure out their delivery routes. He plans his delivery schedule a week in advance, and spends a large portion of the week carefully mapping out delivery routes. Barry is restricted by both time and cost, trying to figure out the fastest and most efficient route.

Planning out a delivery schedule by hand is notoriously difficult and time consuming, not to mention subject to human error. Manually working between Excel and Google Maps to find the best delivery order is inefficient and also raises challenges such as the Travelling Salesman Problem or TSP, which is simply finding the best order in which to visit a set of locations. Through traditional methods of Excel and Google Maps it won’t tell you the best way to order those stops to give you the overall shortest or fastest route but instead show you the quickest route from point A to point B. Now say you throw in point C and point D? An extra level of complexity is added with additional locations. How is Barry to know which location to begin with and the order to complete the rest of his deliveries?

With Run and Route, Barry will have a centralised solution that will allow him to input information about his locations and trucks, and automatically configure the fastest and most cost effective delivery routing schedule. Traditionally, Barry might have begun his route at point A, followed by point B, C and D in that order. By inputting this data in Run and Route, Run and Route will determine the optimal delivery schedule that would show that this particular truck should begin his delivery route at point C, then point A, then point D and finishing at point B. 

Another challenge Barry and other Operations Managers face is creating a schedule that considers delivery time windows and customer availability. Factoring customer availability and time windows is a crucial and important aspect of determining the optimal routes for a fleet of delivery vehicles. For example one shop in Bondi has a strict 2 hour delivery window between 5:00am and 7:00 am, while another customer in Redfern is a bit more flexible and is open for deliveries from 6:00 am to 12:00 am. Manually working through these intricacies one truck at a time not only requires an incredible amount of thought and time, the level of complexity dramatically increases with scale. 

run and route

Solution

Run and Route is Scopta’s Vehicle Routing offering, designed to simplify the planning process for last-mile delivery. It is useful for businesses with multiple vehicles that each perform multiple deliveries per day. Run and Route can help your business cut variable costs and improve your customer service. Remain efficient and competitive with a quality Vehicle Routing Solver that simplifies the role of your Operations Manager and the way you plan and schedule your deliveries. Be confident and assured with the quality and accuracy of your schedules with Run and Routes powerful engine.

Want to know more? Speak to a team member today and find out how Scopta Run and Route can automate your vehicle routing.

Run and Route Contact Form

Creating team friendly rosters and the benefits for everyone

/0 Comments/in , , , , , , /by

Introduction

Creating rosters can be a complex task.  This is especially the case for difficult large workforces with a range of  employee preferences, combinations of full time, part time and casual team members, the need to adhere with EBA rules, fatigue, skills and competence requirements , meeting or exceeding customer service levels while always operating efficiently and controlling costs.  Clearly, producing a ‘good’ roster is more than making sure there is the right number of staff for the right amount of work. 

So, on top of all of this what does a team friendly roster look like and what are the benefits to employers and employees? 

A Friendly Roster

An example of what makes a team friendly roster.

Sarah is the Workforce Planner for the local hospital Emergency Department. She is tasked with organising and preparing the Doctors rosters which she does a month in advance for a 2 week working period. The roster parameters require each Doctor to work a specific amount of ‘unsocial’ hours covering morning, afternoon and night shifts.  Sarah always  does her best to consider the Doctors preferences for specific days off some of which are always the case and some are new requests each period for example to get a mid week night away to see Hamilton in Sydney or an afternoon off for the school swimming carnival.  

Sarah completes the roster by hand creating a compliant roster with all shifts covered and accommodating as many preferences as possible in as fair a manner as she can. However, is it always a ‘good’ roster from everyone’s perspective?

While a ‘good’ roster will vary from business to business and even with respect to  each employee depending on their individual circumstance, one aspect of ‘good’ roster from an employee perspective can be defined as being fair and equitable – team friendly. For example, while Sarah may have created a functional roster that ensures the ED department meets the service level requirements, Dr Brown might have worked the past 4 Saturdays in some capacity impacting on his ability to watch his children’s sports while another team member may have worked an equal amount of hours but more night shifts than other team members.  Although on the surface the roster was compliant and functional, it is not considered a team friendly roster given the unfairness and lack of equality amongst employees. 

In addition, there may be team members who prefer to work weekends, others who prefer nights, some who only work 3 days a week and still others who might be spouses and who cannot work at the same times as their partners – so that someone is home with junior.  

Further, the roster needs to consider patterns of work – moving from morning to afternoon and onto night shifts with then a number of days break.

This gets complex quickly!

A team friendly roster will consider all of these different preferences and requirements and provide shifts which are equitable and fair in providing each team member with the same proportion of night or weekend shifts (unless of course they prefer these) and evenly meets as many of their time off requests as possible.

Benefits

Adopting a team friendly roster has many  benefits to both employees and employers. These include:

Better work-life balance 

Your workforce will be made up of a range of different people with different interests and commitments outside of work. Commitments such as family, study, and sport for example. A study conducted by Gallup Reports found that 53% of employees said that an improved work-life balance was important to them. With a fair and equitable roster these other commitments and interests will be accommodated to the fullest extent possible, making work rosters more manageable and providing employees enjoy an improved work-life balance. 

Staff retention 

Improve staff retention with a balanced roster that is considerate of staff preferences and importantly fair and equitable across the team. There are many factors that contribute to employees leaving, such as career advancement, pay and benefits but also the nature of the rosters they are repeatedly asked to work. Employees have shown to be happier when they are able to balance both work and life commitments and are treated fairly  resulting in employees desire to stay in that job. This is especially important when retaining skilled staff or staff with experience that is hard to come by. By ensuring rosters are fair and equitable across all employees you will reduce conflict and ensure no employees feel stuck with the ‘unsocial’ shifts. 

Biarri Workforce provides open and flexible rules and preference capture functionality so hard or soft constraints and preferences can be considered in the roster creation and the powerful roster optimisation engine in Biarri Workforce allows the Sarah the workforce planner to set the roster objectives and generate team friendly rosters automatically in a matter of minutes.

By using Biarri Workforce, you will be able to improve work-life balance for your team members and ensure your roster is fair and equitable. 

Speak with a consultant today and see how Biarri Workforce can improve the way your business coordinates your human workforce. Whether you are currently rostering manually or looking for a more accommodating solution, the team behind Biarri Workforce are dedicated to making Biarri Workforce work for you. 

Workforce Contact Form