Boost Sales with Flower Delivery Route Planning Software

People in the US spend an average of $26.6 billion annually on floral products. By 2022, the market cap of the online flower delivery segment could reach $343.80 billion. The US floral gifting market is expected to reach $16 billion in 2023, with an average growth of 6% YoY.

If you’re in the flower delivery business or same day flower delivery business, there are a number of strategies you can use to meet rising demand while still providing excellent customer service.

However, scheduling flower delivery drivers effectively to increase their efficiency and productivity for better results is one of the most effective techniques you can use.

What is the best way to accomplish this? Read on to learn more.

Table of Contents

• The Difficulties of Flower Delivery
• The Role of Technology in Flower Delivery Scheduling
• The Advantages of Route Planning Software for Flower Deliveries
• EasyRoutes by Roundtrip

The Difficulties of Flower Delivery

Before we take a look at how to effectively schedule your flower delivery drivers, let’s take look at some of the complexities you might encounter with your flower delivery business.

1) Order volumes vary depending on location and time of year

While restaurant and flower delivery business customers can place orders for any day (be it for a birthday or anniversary), you can count on certain peak times during the year for major holidays like Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day.

Figuring out how to schedule flower delivery drivers to accodomate this fluctuating demain can be a challenge. You also need to plan for flower deliveries that have been planned ahead, as well as for sameday flower delivery orders that may be made.

2) No two weeks are alike

There will always be outliers, no matter how well you analyze the patterns of your flower delivery services or how accurate your forecast is. Outliers can be dealt with using powerful systems integrated into your business ecosystem.

External factors such as traffic, weather conditions, and events such as COVID-19 can have an impact on flower delivery and demand. In the flower delivery industry, every day is different.

You must analyze the new data sets in order to reduce the risk of external damage to your company. Your drivers require access to the most cutting-edge technologies that will enable them to simplify and streamline their delivery processes.

Such tools can assist you in avoiding late or failed deliveries and can ensure that the customer experience is maintained (and hopefully exceeded!).

Using advanced tools to manage your logistics and delivery route planning can help you increase business efficiency and scale your flower delivery business. It can also automate the scheduling process to reduce human intervention and errors.

3) Employee satisfaction and compliance

You must ensure that the delivery business complies with local labor laws, that delivery drivers are provided with appropariate breaks, and that they are paid transparently for the hours they work or the number of deliveries they make, among other things.

If your business struggles to keep flower delivery workers happy, your skilled workers may leave, reducing the efficiency and effectiveness of your company.

Using the right tools to reduce their effort and increase their deliveries can help incentivize your drivers and make their lives much easier. Choosing the right technology can help you build a streamlines local delivery system that helps you scale.

4) Increasing productivity while reducing idle time

A common business strategy of keeping more drivers on the road to boost productivity can only work if every driver is occupied with work. However, realizing this can be difficult. Its up to the business owner to decide which drivers they want to send where and manage the productivity of their driver workforce effectively.

Before selecting a driver to deliver an order, consider factors such as travel time between deliveries, the number of deliveries made by the driver in one trip, the driver’s location in relation to the delivery location, as well as adequate rest breaks for the driver.

Planning for all this can be extremely difficult and complex to achieve manually. To streamline your workforce management and achieve maximum productivity for your on-the-ground workforce, you must incorporate automation into your flower delivery process.

Now that you’ve learned about the challenges a flower delivery company can face in managing its employees and ensuring automated scheduling, you’re ready to get started.

But first, let’s talk a little more about how technology is crucial to assisting your Flower delivery business in streamlining the delivery process.

The Role of Technology in Flower Deliveries

Technology is critical to managing your flower delivery employees’ routes and schedules and ensuring that they work as efficiently as possible to achieve the best results for your customers and your business.

Integrating the right technologies can help your employees avoid stumbling blocks caused by a variety of external factors and provide a positive customer experience. To ensure that your flower delivery business stands out from the competition, you can provide a quality work environment for your delivery drivers and recruit the best talent in the industry.

Technology can help you get the best return on investment and be future-ready for managing your flower delivery business’s rising demand and scalability. It helps you meet your objectives and expand your company’s presence.

However, only a delivery route planner, out of a variety of software and technologies such as customer relationship manager, logistic manager, and inventory manager, among others, can help you automate the scheduling of flower delivery employees.

With the help of a powerful delivery route planner, you can plan ahead of time, steramline the process for your employees, and improve service levels.

The advantages of using a delivery route planner go beyond just scheduling your employees’ schedules. Let’s take a closer look at some of the numerous advantages it can provide.

The Advantages of Route Planning Software for Flower Deliveries

1) Reduce delivery costs

Route planning software can assist you in boosting vehicle efficiency and lowering fuel costs. The software can assist your drivers in accessing optimized delivery routes in order to arrive at their destination faster and save fuel by avoiding traffic jams and longer routes.

Your flower delivery drivers can increase their work output by using optimized delivery routes, allowing them to save more fuel and increase their business profits.

Your flower delivery business’s overall operating costs will drop, and you’ll be able to scale it with ease.

2) Meet the ever-increasing expectations of your customers

Flower delivery companies are facing multiple challenges in ensuring timely and accurate deliveries to their target audience due to changing consumer behaviour in the industry. Route planning software can meet your needs and assist you in achieving your objectives without sacrificing service quality.

Several leading delivery route planners use geocoding to help you create tailored routes by analyzing various external scenarios such as ETAs and traffic movement and assisting delivery drivers in delivering to the correct address in a timely manner.

Customers can use their Email or SMS to track their orders and receive the best customer experience thanks to the order tracking links provided by the best delivery route planners.

A professional route planner’s advanced functionalities can deliver a tailored and optimized Flower delivery experience to customers in a timely manner while maintaining food quality.

3) Bird’s eye view of your delivery operations

You can get a bird’s eye view of your flower delivery workforce’s operation, which can help you ensure there are no bottlenecks in the flow of your business.

Customers can order flowers online, and delivery drivers can complete the delivery on time, and you can check your business workflow in just a few clicks.

With clear ecosystem visibility, you can make real-time decisions to ensure quick and agile delivery for better results.
You can keep track of challenges or deviations and deal with them appropriately to ensure that delivery operations are not hampered.

4) Reduces the need for manual intervention

A good delivery route planner reduces manual intervention and automates the management process, allowing you to scale your flower delivery operations and meet your business objectives.

You can make changes and update the existing schedule or workflow to avoid delays or failed deliveries by quickly notifying the workforce.

Reduced manual intervention allows your employees to focus on the core business while saving time and energy, resulting in increased productivity.

The automation of redundant processes can improve the efficiency of your team, reduce errors, and ensure that your customers receive the hot and healthy food they ordered.

5) Makes data work for you

Data is crucial in assisting you in scaling your flower delivery business. By utilizing data to help you manage your workforce and delivery operation in an organized manner, you can predict and forecast the eating habits of your customers.

A delivery route planner can assist you in extracting workforce and business performance data to help you optimize your current business by analyzing various elements for better decision-making.

These are the main advantages that a dedicated route planner can provide for your Flower delivery company.

But which route planner is best for your company’s needs and objectives?

EasyRoutes by Roundtrip

EasyRoutes by Roundtrip is powerful route planning software for Shopify that can help you optimize multi-stop delivery paths and guide your on-the-ground workforce to take the shortest route possible, saving time, energy, and fuel.

You can make desired changes to your delivery schedules, routes and driver assignments with just a few clicks, allowing you to adjust your business to maximize efficiency.

You can achieve quick last-mile delivery processes and provide your customers with a quality flower delivery experience thanks to the intuitive and easy-to-use UI/UX.

Your drivers can also take proof of delivery photos so your customers know their flowers arrived on time and in perfect condition.

With EasyRoutes by Roundtrip, you can save up to 95% on route planning time.

Get a free 14-day trial to get a feel for the tool and how it can help you achieve your business goals.