Professional Paper Supplies Modernises Last Mile Delivery with Descartes Solution
“The last-mile delivery solution has saved us approximately 25 hours per week in delivery planning for the Transport Manager and added 17 productive hours daily across our driver team. With the extra time available to us, we have focused on increasing delivery capacity, staff training, and pursuing other strategic goals.”
Jon Robshaw, Transport Manager
Planning time saved 25hrs/wk
Customer Experience Paperless
Fleet Size 17
Professional Paper Supplies (PPS) is a York-based, family-owned business, founded in 1999. PPS supplies a wide range of essential products to various industries in the north of England, including restaurants, schools, cleaning services, and other workplaces. Their offerings include paper, cleaning and janitorial supplies, catering disposables, industrial packaging, personal protective equipment (PPE), workwear, and more.
Due to an increase in customer demand, PPS faced challenges in its delivery operations, with manual processes consuming significant amounts of time. As a result, PPS needed a solution to automate and optimise its last-mile delivery processes, reduce manual planning time, increase productivity, and enhance customer satisfaction with a modernised delivery experience.
After exploring a range of options available on the market, PPS selected Descartes’ last mile delivery solution to meet their needs and accommodate their growth plans. Descartes’ proven route optimisation capabilities, electronic proof-of-delivery (ePOD) features, and cloud-based infrastructure integrated with PPS’ existing systems and offered it the functionality it needed to optimise existing workflows and provide a foundation for further operational enhancements.
The challenge
PPS recognised that it needed to modernise in order to remain competitive in an ever-evolving logistics landscape. The company embarked on a digitisation initiative, which included updating its website, optimising its route planning and delivery scheduling, whilst enhancing its overall delivery efficiency to support same-day and next-day delivery demands.
“Due to rising customer expectations for rapid delivery options (same-day or next-day), we understood that we needed to adapt to stay competitive,” said Jon Robshaw, Transport Manager, PPS. “Over the past couple of years, we have virtually turned our operations around. We have a new ecommerce website and we have digitalised the majority of our operations as we previously relied heavily on paper for everything, from day-to-day office administration and deliveries."
“We started with our enterprise resource planning (ERP) and warehouse management system (WMS) solutions. By doing this over the past two years, we have become more efficient, productive and profitable. However, once everything was in place, we needed a solution that focused on last-mile delivery improvements,” explained Jon.
The Solution
Once PPS’s foundational systems were in place, they selected Descartes’ cloud-based, last-mile delivery solution to help improve operational efficiency and customer experience. This solution supports dynamic delivery requirements, including same-day delivery, by offering flexible, efficient and cost-effective time windows and delivery options.
Jon stated, “Descartes’ advanced route optimisation and robust cloud-based system helped us provide flexible and efficient delivery scheduling. Key features such as electronic proof-of-delivery (ePOD) and an integrated GPS-based mobile application were particularly attractive for enhancing efficiency and enabling real-time tracking.”
The Descartes solution was integrated into PPS’s existing digital infrastructure, supporting its wider digital transformation. With an integrated GPS-based mobile application, Descartes’ solution has helped PPS to ensure that routes are executed according to plan and exceptions are handled effectively to maintain customer satisfaction. The electronic proof-of-delivery function captures delivery details and has helped PPS streamline the delivery process and self-service customer engagement allows customers to track their orders in real-time.
The Results
Overall, Descartes’ last-mile delivery solution has helped PPS modernise its delivery operations, significantly reducing time spent on manual tasks, and increasing productivity across its team of planners and drivers, allowing them to focus on more deliveries and strategic initiatives.
Jon commented, “Since working with Descartes, we have shortened the time it takes to load our 250 daily orders into the best available vehicle, as well as to plan and route the optimal sequence of next-day deliveries—all while prioritising economic efficiencies. It also replaced the use of printed delivery notes with electronic proof-of-delivery, saving paper and providing our customers with a modern consumer-focused delivery experience."
“The last-mile delivery solution has saved us approximately 25 hours per week in delivery planning for the Transport Manager and added 17 productive hours daily across our driver team. With the extra time available to us, we have focused on increasing delivery capacity, staff training, and pursuing other strategic goals,” said Jon.
Moving forward, PPS intends to continue using the Descartes solution as a core component of its delivery operations and digital transformation. “At PPS, we are committed to improving efficiency and customer satisfaction through digitisation. We are thrilled with how Descartes has supported our goals for operational excellence and provides customers with a consumer-centric, real-time delivery experience,” Jon emphasised.
“We are excited to be able to start looking forward into how Descartes, and our other digitalisation efforts, can now provide valuable information for the next phase of our strategic growth,” he concluded.
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