Whether on land or the sea, optimizing for the best shipping routes is a must for any business. Not only does it save you money, but it also helps your fleet stay efficient and help you get a better bottom line. But, rather than plan everything by hand, there are tools that can help.
Whether you’re decarbonizing the transportation sector or simply want a better margin, there are high-tech tools that can give you a decisive advantage. Here are some of the tools that can help you determine the best shipping routes.
What Factors Go Into Finding The Best Shipping Routes?
Determining the best shipping routes is a complex process that uses several factors to maximize shipping times. Every tool uses almost the same process but utilizes different algorithms and planning models. When combined with real-time data, these can give your business the edge that it needs.
Ocean freight logistics will make more use of weather data compared to land freight logistics and shipping. Weather systems can affect ocean freight more than land, mainly due to tide data throughout the voyage.
Land-based shipping takes traffic data as a more valuable data point and can be a more complicated consideration. Traffic can change on a whim, especially if there are events such as accidents and detours.
Both land and ocean shipping tools also need to consider your business needs. Decarbonization commitments can affect the shipping routes you take, together with road conditions. Route optimization will account for multiple stops, their proximity to each other, and which parcels have more priority.
There are also monitoring features that are a must to help businesses. For example, driver tracking and customer communications are vital considerations for land shipping. On the other hand, Ocean freight needs to consider details such as loading conditions and cargo type to create the best-case scenario.
- Multi-Route GPS Planners
Multi-route GPS maps are the most common and among the most potent tools that determine the best shipping routes. Sure, small companies may think that free tools like Google Maps are enough, but if you want real benefits, multi-route is the answer for all your major shipping routes.
What makes multi-route GPS powerful is the sheer data it provides. It removes the guesswork out of your day and helps you optimize the routes you plan to take. Depending on the brand that you use, you can get several additional advantages from it.
The best delivery route planner systems can take several addresses in your area of business. It can then calculate which shipments to prioritize, what routes can save more time and fuel. It also helps your productivity, letting your employees deliver more items for the same amount of time.
Most multi-route planner apps also cut down on customer service calls because they reduce the number of errors you make. It also improves your estimated time of delivery, which can be tight if you’re making a same-day shipment. Most planners will even have a way to predict accurate ETA using real-time traffic data.
- Last-Mile Delivery Solutions
Last-mile delivery software is not something that you stumble upon every day. Most companies now manage data and tasks that give fulfillment centers a faster and more optimized turn-around time. The standard has now changed so much that an advanced system can help iron out the creases in your routes.
Most last-mile delivery software saves time, money, and fuel by dividing shipments by route. In addition, most systems use data validation solutions like barcodes and QR codes to simplify sorting. Some even help you create shipping regions that can subdivide towards smaller delivery routes.
Last-mile software also gives you a better, more pin-accurate route that calculates and assigns efficient ways and detects traffic jams in the general area. Some even allow customers to set delivery times to ensure that they can get their parcel.
- Dynamic Shipping Route Optimization
For international shipping routes, there are also fantastic tools that optimize marine shipping routes. Among the best systems that shipping companies use are dynamic route optimization tools. Much like last-mile delivery systems for land-based travel, route optimization tools take several factors into account to give a ship the best ETA.
Unlike streets where traffic is a concern, most route optimization tools use open ocean weather data to find the best routes. Open ocean weather data is crucial, as it can dictate if your vessel needs to reroute and adjust according to existing wave and swell forecasts.
Many platforms even utilize data lakes that contain millions of route options to see historical precedent on the viability of specific routes. Such route information can be valuable and save shipping companies crucial days and weeks on their calculations. In addition, the weather forecasts also update every six hours to account for rapidly changing local weather.
Many dynamic ocean route optimization tools can even create plans that don’t simply factor in weather data and historical routes. To maximize your profit ratio, some even use strategic initiatives like CO2 targets, demurrage, bunker prices, and even the time charter index.
A logistics tool that factors business metrics can be valuable to give you the most efficient shipping routes. For example, calculations for market impact and even contract terms can help optimize what paths need to finish first. Combine this with real-time data, and you should be good to go.
- Ocean Fleet Route Planner
A powerful tool that provides the best shipping routes is the ocean fleet route planning systems. These offer fully-integrated cloud-based planning systems that streamline shipment planning and documentation throughout a fleet’s cycle. As a result, these systems save both time and money and even improve information accuracy.
Ocean fleet route planners utilize entire databases that take into account six months of historical ocean traffic data and six months of routes into the future. By combining shipping routes from different companies, this wealth of data can provide a good insight into what routes work best.
Companies looking to plan their routes can also use customized parameters to create better insights. They can include transit times, cost, carriers, and other details to improve routing and get the most optimized results. In addition, route planning tools provide sailing schedules and even booking requests.
Final Thoughts
Determining the best shipping routes manually is a thing of the past. There are now high-tech tools that can help you plan the best routes possible. Whether it’s ocean fleet route planners or last-mile systems, these can give your company a more efficient fleet.
