Manual Route Planning: Is It Still Relevant?

Are you still relying on the traditional pen-and-paper approach for route planning? 

If yes, you are not only struggling with routing inefficiencies, ever-rising operational costs, shrinking profits, and dissatisfied customers but also missing out on many benefits, like saving time by automating routing and increasing productivity through shorter routes. 

Manual route planning makes it difficult to ensure an excellent customer experience while minimizing costs. So, what can you do, and how can you improve your current process and change its automation? 

This blog delves into the concept of manual route planning and how it is done. It further elaborates on the limitations of manual routing and compares it with automated route planning. It also explains how route planning and optimization software helps achieve automated routing and benefits businesses. So, let’s have a look.

What is Manual Route Planning? 

Manual route planning is the process of manually devising the order of stops and directions for a specific journey, without relying on automated algorithms or optimization tools.

It involves relying on dispatchers’ expertise or delivery managers who determine the optimal route for deliveries. Instead of using advanced algorithms, businesses rely on manual routing to analyze factors such as location, order priority, and road networks.

While manual route planning has been the conventional method for years, advancements in technology now offer alternatives that can significantly enhance efficiency and drive business growth.

Staggering numbers, right?

Now that you are clear with what manual route planning is, let us discuss the basics of route planning and its importance.

What is the Role of Route Planning in Your Business?

Imagine that you are running a delivery service business with multiple drivers across the city to deliver packages or services to customers. Each day you might face a challenge to ensure timely deliveries, or increased fuel costs due to inefficient route planning. 

However, efficient route planning plays a crucial role in the business, from logistics and transportation to service providers. It involves determining the most efficient routes for drivers to reach multiple destinations considering factors like distance, traffic conditions, and resource optimization. 

At its core, route planning is about minimizing costs, increase in productivity and enhance customer satisfaction. 

Now that we understand the crucial role of route planning in driving business, let’s delve into the process of manual route planning.

What is the Process of Manual Route Planning? – 8 Steps to Follow

Manual route planning is a process that involves several steps, often carried out by logistics coordinators, dispatchers, or delivery managers. Here are the 8 simple steps to follow. 

Step 1: Gather relevant information

The first step in manual route planning is gathering all the necessary information. This includes the list of destinations or stops, any specific customer requirements or time windows, and any additional factors that may impact the routes, such as road closures or construction. This can be a time-consuming process if there are a large number of deliveries. 

Step 2: Prioritize deliveries 

Based on the desired sequence or priority of stops, a human delivery route planner determines the order in which destinations should be visited. This decision is often influenced by factors such as delivery time windows, customer preferences, or efficient clustering of stops.

Step 3: Study maps

With the information at hand, manual route planners typically refer to maps, or printed materials to visualize the geography and road networks. They analyze the available routes, considering factors such as distance, and potential obstacles.

Step 4: Plan the route

With a good understanding of the area, the planner then manually plots the route. This can be a complex process, particularly if there are multiple delivery points. The goal is to find the most efficient route that minimizes travel time and distance.

Step 5: Allocate resources

The next step involves assigning drivers and vehicles to each route. This requires careful consideration of factors such as driver’s availability, vehicle capacity, and vehicle suitability for each route.

Step 6: Consider constraints

Manual route planning requires considering various constraints and variables. These include factors like traffic conditions, the hour of the day, vehicle capacity, and driver’s availability. Route planners must adjust to these variables to ensure efficient operations.

Step 7: Share the route plan 

Once the optimal route is ready, share it with the drivers. This includes providing them with a detailed route map and delivery schedule with any notes given by the customers. 

Step 8: Track progress and adjust

Once the deliveries are on the way, track progress and make necessary changes that include dealing with delays, rerouting due to road closures, or accommodating last-minute schedules. 

However, even if you follow the process, manual route planning carries a few drawbacks that can hinder operational efficiency and growth. Let’s explore them and uncover the need for more advanced solutions.

6 Major Limitations of Manual Route Planning

The word ‘manual’ itself means it is done with human intervention that consumes more time. Let us learn these drawbacks in detail that might affect business growth. 

1. Time-consuming and inefficient

Manual delivery route planning requires you to take a local guide’s help, study maps, and analyze routes for deliveries and pick-ups. This results in the waste of your valuable hours that you could utilize in focusing on the critical aspects integral to scaling your business.

Further, routes planned manually are mostly based on guesswork and error-prone. For instance, you may mistakenly add the same stop twice, type an incorrect address, or skip adding a destination. Mistakes like incorrect distance estimations, suboptimal route sequencing, or overlooking critical variables are also likely. All these errors cumulatively lead to routing inefficiencies, causing delivery delays and customer dissatisfaction.

2. Limited scalability

As your business grows and handles more delivery orders, your logistics requirements may become more complex. Manage these needs manually may overwhelm your route planners. 

This, in turn, may make it difficult for you to scale up your manual processes to create routes for your ever-expanding delivery areas. This may also reduce your overall efficiency, limiting your potential to grow your business.

3. Increased operational costs and reduced profits

Routing inefficiencies in manual planning can result in delayed or failed deliveries. For instance, if your driver ends up visiting a wrong delivery location due to the incorrect pincode, it will lead to wastage of their time and fuel. 

Moreover, this failed delivery attempt will incur unnecessary return and redelivery costs. As a result, it may become challenging for you to reduce your last-mile delivery costs and boost your overall profitability.

4. Absence of dynamic routing capabilities

No matter how seasoned your human planners are, they still may fail to optimize routes based on multiple variables, such as real-time traffic, delivery time windows, or drivers’ shifts. Even if they manage to plan routes, they may not be able to quickly adjust them to handle priority changes, road closures, or traffic congestion.

Further, a manual route planning process doesn’t provide the freedom to track and monitor fleets in real time. This lack of visibility can cause communication silos between you or your dispatch team and on-field drivers. It may render you unable to get an update on any obstacles or issues and address them proactively to prevent unwanted delays.

5. Poor customer experience

Manual planning may cause the inability to handle multiple delivery time slots while scheduling delivery routes. It can lead to missed delivery time windows or longer wait time for customers in some cases.

Besides, you may not be able to track your in-transit drivers to know whether they are progressing as estimated or not. Without this real-time monitoring, you may fail to calculate and send accurate estimated arrival times to your customers. All these factors can lead to customer dissatisfaction.

6. Inability to create multi-stop routes

As long as your business is small and has a handful of customers spread across a small region, manual planning may suffice. However, as your business expands and the number of customers go up, it can become challenging to achieve efficient routing for multiple delivery stops. 

On top of that, handling seasonal surges in customers’ demands may make it harder for your delivery staff to fulfill them in the absence of well-planned, multi-constrained routes. This can cause your on-field delivery operations to crumble and restrict you from ensuring a quality delivery experience.

The above drawbacks emphasize the need for businesses to explore alternative solutions for more efficient and effective route planning. 

However, the best alternative solution for any delivery and logistics business is automated route planning. 

Let’s find out why automated routing is the ideal choice over manual routing.

What is the Difference Between Manual Route Planning and Automated Route Planning? 

The modern way of route planning uses software solutions, often driven by AI route optimization and advanced algorithms. Let us find out some of the aspects that overcome the challenges faced by manual route planning.

S.No	Aspects	Manual Route Planning	Automated Route Planning
1	Time efficiency	Planning routes is time-consuming if there are hundreds of routes.	Manages to plan routes for hundreds of stops within a few seconds.
2	Scalability	Difficult to scale as the number of stops increases.	Easily scalable and can manage a number of routes without a hitch.
3	Error ratio	Manual planning involves humans leading to inefficient routes or missed deliveries.	With advanced algorithms, experience fewer errors and more precision.
4	Adaptability	Lacks real-time adaptability; unable to account for sudden changes in traffic conditions, etc.	Highly adaptable in real-time, taking into account sudden changes or updates.
5	Cost-effective	This may lead to higher costs due to inefficiencies in routes, increased fuel consumption, and vehicle maintenance.	Automated routing can lead to cost savings by optimizing routes for fuel efficiency and reducing maintenance costs.
6	Decision-making	Depends heavily on the individual experience.	Relies on data-driven decision-making, providing optimal solutions based on various factors.
7	Report and analytics	Limited or no capability for tracking and analyzing routes, performance metrics, etc.	Often comes with robust reporting and analytics features, providing valuable insights for business improvements.
8	Customer satisfaction	Delays or errors in delivery due to inefficient routing may impact customer satisfaction.	Timely and efficient deliveries due to optimized routing can improve customer satisfaction. Push notifications and ETAs for customers to track the packages.
9	Sustainability	Inefficient routing can lead to high carbon emissions.	Route optimization leads to reduce fuel consumption and lower carbon emissions.
10	Risk management	Difficult to anticipate and manage risks like vehicle breakdowns or driver’s availability.	Many systems offer risk management features such as alternate routing and capacity planning.
11	Customizability	The route can be customized manually, but it consumes a lot of time and might lead to errors.	Many systems offer easy customization of routing parameters to best-fit business needs.
12	Integration	Limited capacity for integration with other systems like inventory management, customer relationship management (CRM), etc.	Can often be integrated with your current business systems for seamless operations.
13	Improvements and updates	Difficult to regularly update and improve the routing process based on feedback or changes in business needs.	Many systems offer regular updates and improvements based on user feedback and changing needs.
14	Response time	Responding to last-minute changes or emergencies can be slow and challenging.	Can re-route the routes quickly based on last-minute changes or emergencies.
15	Resource allocation	Resource allocation like vehicles and drivers can be unbalanced due to manual coordination.	Efficient and balanced resource allocation thanks to algorithms that can consider all resources simultaneously.
16	Data management	Difficulty managing and storing route data for future reference.	Efficient data management, with the ability to store and retrieve route data for analysis and future use.

Now that you know how automated route planning has a competitive edge over manual route planning, let’s understand how delivery route planning can help implement it efficiently.

6 Benefits of Delivery Route Planning and Optimization Software

Route planning and optimization software removes the guesswork from your routing process. Empowered by  ML and AI, a route planning tool predicts accurate results to achieve the most efficient routes.

Here are the benefits you get from a professional route planner.

1. Automation

Automated route planning is the most significant benefit a route planner offers to your delivery business. It helps eliminate redundancies and streamline your delivery operations for business growth. It also helps minimize human intervention through advanced algorithms to plan your daily routes. 

Using automation, you can also send real-time updates and notifications to keep your customers informed on their delivery or service request statuses. You can also use it to create multiple delivery paths within a few clicks and save your vital time.

2. Real-time visibility

Delivery route planning and optimization software provides real-time visibility into your delivery operations. Using this, you can coordinate with your on-ground delivery drivers to determine if they are facing any issues, act promptly to address them, and keep deliveries on track.

With the GPS-based tracking this software provides, you can also send parcel tracking information to your customers. This way, real-time visibility helps your workforce operate in sync, maximize productivity, and enhance your customers’ delivery experience.

3. Minimize overall costs

Using a delivery route planner, you can optimize delivery or service paths to ensure on-time deliveries. It can help reduce your delivery distances, fuel costs, and vehicle maintenance expenses while maximizing deliveries or appointments.

Route planning and optimization software solution helps minimize paperwork and stationery items to record information manually. This can help lower your operational costs and increase your profit margins. 

4. In-depth performance analytics

A route planner helps you extract in-depth reports to optimize your delivery operations and boost your performance. For instance, it gives you route summary reports that show the percentage of deliveries or appointments completed for each driver and the duration taken for it.  

These types of reports provide detailed insights into your team’s overall performance. They help you identify areas for improvement and make informed decisions to eliminate them. You can also analyze historical trends and variances from estimates to fine-tune your route planning.

5. Efficient bulk order management

A multi-stop route planner can help schedule multiple deliveries and service appointments and create optimized routes with hundreds or thousands of stops. It also lets you assign them to your drivers within a few clicks.

You can also use this software to track your delivery operations centrally and efficiently. Thus, it can help you manage bulk orders for your expanding client base as your business scales and achieves maximum delivery efficiency.

So, what are you waiting for? 

Transform your business into an automated delivery system for efficient delivery and services.

Switch from Manual Route Planning to Automated Routing for Seamless Deliveries 

While manual route planning has been there for decades, it gives rise to many operational inefficiencies. This is why businesses that offer delivery services throughout the city need a robust solution to enhance their route planning process.

If you are also one of those business owners still using traditional pen-and-paper routing, it is high time you implemented a delivery route planning software solution to streamline your delivery operations.