Descartes' Route Optimisation revolutionises delivery for Brook Furniture Rental

People and businesses in transition rent furniture, accessories, and housewares from Brook Furniture Rental for their homes and offices.

Descartes' state of the art last mile delivery solution, which combines intelligent route planning and execution, dynamic delivery appointment scheduling, real-time notifications, and mobile proof-of-delivery, was used by Brook to replace its manual processes and enhance its white glove delivery operations.

Brook greatly enhanced the customer experience, boosted fleet capacity and efficiency, and decreased operating expenses.

Contact a Solution Expert

 

 

The Challenge: Customer Experience Negatively Impacted by poor Manual Processes

Brook offers direct-to-consumer (D2C) and business-to-business (B2B) clients white glove delivery and pickup services for furniture and housewares (e.g., commercial staging, corporate housing, office equipment).

The business oversees a leased fleet of 26-foot box vans and twelve distribution sites. Being forced to work in a time-critical situation, Brook's paper-based procedures were inadequate and their in-house system for accepting orders and scheduling deliveries and setting delivery routes slowed response times, provided no insight into vehicle capacity, and jeopardised sales development.

Additionally, the company's support service was inundated with "where's my truck" inquiries due to the inability to offer real-time status updates. This led to a protracted exchange of emails between the customer success team, fleet managers, and drivers.

 

“Descartes Route Planner and the Track-My-Truck feature have been a huge win for our customers, enabling us to give them the flexibility, responsiveness, and transparency they expect and deserve, while also reducing our overhead costs and boosting fleet productivity to drive growth. Delivery operations improved more than we expected, faster than we expected, and it’s made life easier and more efficient for customers and internal teams alike.”

- Nathan Sanders, President and CEO, Brook Furniture Rental

 

With a head office in Lake Forest, Illinois, and distribution centres all over the country, Brook Furniture Rental offers business-to-business (B2B) and direct-to-consumer (D2C) furniture, home essentials and décor items that can be delivered in as little as 1-2 working days to assist individuals and organisations going through a transition.

 

The Solution: Automated Continuous Route Optimisation and Real-time Visibility

Brook implemented the Descartes end-to-end platform for last mile delivery operations as part of an enterprise-wide digital transformation, including creating a B2B portal and a new D2C website that offered self-service for consumers and business customers. This platform incorporated dynamic delivery appointment booking and scheduling, continuous dynamic route planning and execution, mobile Proof of Delivery and a real-time notification processes for customers.

“Our ability to grow sales was hampered by a time-consuming manual workflow and a homegrown system that had no planning capabilities, no advanced intelligence, and required paper-based follow-up. We were, no doubt, losing business opportunities because we had little idea of our capacity and could never give the customer a quick response,” said Nathan Sanders, President and CEO of Brook Furniture Rental. “Speed equals growth, and Descartes Route Planner is the key to the efficient, on-time delivery service that is accelerating our sales growth.”

Descartes’ Route Planner algorithms optimise routing decisions by taking into account many variables, including the quantity of pieces, the location, delivery capacity available, the amount of time needed for unloading and setup, drive times, typical traffic conditions, drivers’ hours limits, customer availability, and more. By adding another 4-6% to its already excellent on-time delivery record, Brook achieved an industry best-in-class Delivery-on-Time of up to 97%. According to Sanders, “We markedly improved dispatch efficiency and route productivity, which opened up additional delivery capacity and reduced our delivery costs,” said Sanders.

 

Learn Book Furniture Rental's journey with Descartes

 

Brook can provide clients with delivery alternatives in real-time at the point of sale (POS) because of Descartes’ dynamic delivery appointment scheduling software that utilises real-time inventory updates. “The Descartes solution is tied to our B2B portal and D2C website to allow self-service delivery booking. Customers can choose their actual delivery dates to avoid ‘recommended’ dates and date changes,” noted Sanders.

With the help of intelligent dispatching and real-time GPS vehicle tracking, the Descartes system automates delivery execution, enabling proactive decision-making and quick customer engagement in response to unforeseen delivery issues such as road traffic accidents. Descartes Mobile, a mobile application and wireless messaging network combined, helps drivers navigate their delivery routes and record important POD data while simultaneously updating Brook's clients on the status of deliveries in real time.

“With our white-labelled Track-My-Truck feature, customers can see where their truck is and when it will arrive, down to the minute, saving them time and energy,” said Sanders. “We’ve taken what was once a somewhat gruelling experience and made it stress-free—no more back-and-forth, no more unreliability and disappointment when it comes to deliveries.”

“We’re driven by the goal of providing an unparalleled customer experience, so we’re thrilled that ‘where’s my truck?’ calls have decreased by 50% and that customers are getting time back in their day thanks to real-time ETAs.”, Sanders added.

 

Routing Software Results 

Greater Route Efficiency

Brook increased its on-time delivery performance to an industry-leading 97% thanks to Descartes’ dynamic appointment scheduling, always-on route optimisation, and real-time smartphone updates.

Improved Customer Experience

With the website’s 24/7 self-service appointment scheduling solution,  real-time status notifications, and updated ETAs via the Track-My-Truck service, clients can be confident that their preferred delivery date will be met, eliminating the uncertainty of delivery windows.

Cost Savings

Descartes’ Route Planner helped Brook increase route density and improve fleet capacity, which resulted in a reduction in operational costs. Removal of paper-based procedures also helped with the reduction in the number of planners by 75%.

Boosted Productivity

Without purchasing additional trucks, Brook’s fleet's productivity increased, enabling them to deliver twice as many goods. With the ability for consumers to self-serve and select their own delivery appointments, Brook has more than doubled its service call response speed, cut customer contact time in half, and received 50% fewer calls asking "where's my truck?"

 

Are you looking for your own routing solution? Contact one of our experts.