PBO Logistics Expands Business Using Descartes’ Last Mile Delivery Solution
“Investing in Descartes has been the game changer we expected it would be for our business. Descartes’ last mile delivery solution enabled us to win not just one, but two major contracts without increasing headcount.”
Matt Shields, Director, PBO Logistics
Delivery Capacity Increased 8x
Operations headcount No Increase
Saving on driver's hours 10%
PBO Logistics is a global logistics provider of total solutions for freight forwarding, warehousing, and export packing, specialising in handling ‘modest’ and complex project shipments. The business has the experience, track record and efficient processes to support a wide array of top-tier logistics services, all tailored to meet its customers' diverse transportation and supply chain needs.
Through its centrally based, state-of-the-art warehousing facility, PBO Logistics offers highly secure and scalable options for its customers’ inventory and distribution requirements. Its dedicated team works with customers to create comprehensive packaging solutions based on the nature, size, and fragility of their goods, ensuring optimal protection during transit.
When it comes to international freight forwarding, few other freight forwarders can deliver the same added value and attention to detail that can be found at PBO Logistics – thanks, in part, to its partnership with Descartes.
The Challenge:
Prior to working with Descartes to support with deliveries, PBO Logistics’ warehousing and road freight team managed the storage and deliveries for around 11,000 boxes per month. Two planners used manual processes to plan routes and schedule deliveries. However, in order to win a major new contract, PBO Logistics (PBO) had to prove that its team could accurately and efficiently scale its operations to schedule and deliver on-time around 60,000 boxes monthly across the U.K. Additionally, PBO had to prove to its customer that it would be able to handle a mix of B2B and B2C deliveries for high-value, custom-built, fragile, homeware goods – and, that it would be able to offer the rapid, fast and reliable shipping experience that consumers have come to expect today.
Aside from rapid fulfilment, delivery tracking and electronic proof of delivery (ePOD) were also important to PBO’s potential new customer: PBO had to be able to prove it could provide customers with effective customer notifications about the status of their delivery. In addition to helping the brand fulfil its customer promise, this level of transparency and efficiency is key to optimising the delivery of goods so that fuel resources and time are not wasted unnecessarily.
Meeting this entire wider challenge was not straightforward. PBO sought a partner that appreciated the full scale and complexity of its - and its customer’s - requirements. This meant identifying the right kind of technology provider that had the experience and expertise in uniting logistics-intensive businesses in commerce. Any supplier would need to understand not only the intricacies of the project, but also the wider impact on PBO’s business and enable PBO to support the required delivery volumes for its customer, cost-effectively, at scale.
The Solution:
PBO Logistics explored various solutions with four different technology providers. However, none could confidently offer the proven consultative expertise and customised technology and deployment options that Descartes put forward. Consequently, PBO Logistics chose to deploy Descartes’ last-mile delivery solution – including Descartes’ route planner and mobile electronic proof-of-delivery (ePOD) software.
Descartes’ cloud-based last-mile delivery solution typically helps distribution-intensive companies improve their operational efficiency and customer experience. It supports dynamic delivery requirements, including same-day delivery, by offering flexible, efficient and cost-effective time windows and delivery options. The Descartes solution improves route productivity by using advanced optimisation technology to reduce the distance driven per delivery, which maximises delivery capacity and reduces costs. With an integrated GPS-based mobile application, the solution coordinates drivers, dispatchers and call centres to ensure that routes are executed according to plan and exceptions are handled efficiently.
ePOD captures delivery details and streamlines the delivery process, and self-service customer engagement allows customers to track their orders in real-time. The solution improves delivery sustainability through increased route productivity, which results in less CO2 per delivery and eliminates paper manifests and delivery documents.
The Results:
Matt Shields, Director, PBO Logistics says: “Investing in Descartes has been the game changer we expected it would be for our business. Descartes’ last mile delivery solution enabled us to win not just one, but two major contracts without increasing headcount."
"It has allowed us to plan and execute over five-fold the volume of monthly deliveries, enabling us to deliver around 60,000 boxes per month on-time accurately across the UK. Descartes’ automation capabilities, relating to the planning and delivery of our customers’ goods, has also reduced any previous inaccuracies and inefficiencies that might have crept in when we used manual processes in the past.”
“Since working with Descartes we’ve used its route optimisation to co-ordinate and plan the routes of delivery for around 40 of our vehicles daily across the UK. This has resulted in about a 10 percent saving on driver hours too. The planning software also integrates with an app that our drivers can access while on the road. Our routes, delivery information, and ePOD can all be managed efficiently via this app. What is more, our team can also now handle around 6 – 8 times more deliveries per week; because Descartes’ last-mile delivery solution does a lot of heavy lifting for our staff when it comes to planning and executing our deliveries. This means we can re-allocate team members to other more strategic initiatives within the business while they carry out their day-to-day tasks.”
“The entire engagement with Descartes has been a success. The pre-sales and technical teams were fantastic at guiding us through all the complexities and any potential challenges and road-blocks that came up during the project. As you can imagine, a deployment of this nature will have moments where extra attention is needed to be provided by Descartes to support us – suffice to say we worked well together. I couldn’t recommend Descartes’ highly enough. Its technology forms a core part of our operations and has enabled us to sustain our growth.”
“We look forward to working together with Descartes and are now exploring the use of appointment tracking as part of the next phase of our engagement together.”