Narrow Your Delivery Windows

A smartphone-based, real-time delivery tracking solution enables this furniture company to improve on-time delivery rates from 89% to 98%.

When was the last time you had to wait for a delivery? What time window were you given? The entire day? Half a day? That's not the way you want to spend your day, and if you're in a company making deliveries, that's not the way you want your customers to spend their days. But without tight controls on delivery, and visibility into driver status, it's difficult to make the windows any smaller. That's where mobile systems come into play, and that's how Arhaus Furniture, a high-end regional furniture retailer in the Midwest, was able to get to a two-hour service window.

Arhaus is based in Cleveland and services 11 states from one DC (distribution center) there. It routes 45 drivers from that DC and 10 hubs in its area of coverage to handle 4,000 to 5,000 deliveries per month, both to stores and consumer homes.

The deliveries, once requested, were routed and scheduled for a four-hour window by dispatch staff members calling 50 to 60 people per day to get deliveries scheduled. Once scheduled, drivers were given paper manifests. They were then required to call into the dispatch center at 10 a.m., 1 p.m., and 3 p.m. to update their status. If they weren't within two stops of their last call by 3 p.m., they then had to call in every hour. Meanwhile, customers were calling in, asking about the status of their deliveries. Once the deliveries were done, the drivers would forward the paper manifests back to headquarters for processing.