Turning Delivery Data into Business Decisions: A Beginner’s Guide

Every delivery tells a story.

It might tell you how long a driver was on the road, if your customer received the order on time, which routes resulted in traffic jams, and even why a client was not satisfied. The most challenging part for a business is to know what to do with this information.

Modern delivery technology can help companies turn processes such as courier management, route planning, and delivery tracking into actionable data with the help of a delivery tracking app.

This information can then be used to analyze and optimize operations and even improve the customer experience. Particularly for small and growing businesses, delivery data is a powerful tool that helps such companies rely on hard facts instead of instincts and unproven decisions.

Below, you will find a list of critical considerations on how to extract maximum value from your delivery data.

What Is Delivery Data?

In general, delivery data refers to information collected throughout the delivery process.

This set of data may include:

• Delivery time

• Driver’s whereabouts

• Distance driven

• The route taken

• Completed and failed deliveries

• Customer wait time

• Delivery attempt information

• Proof-of-delivery data

• Driver productivity

• Number of orders completed on time

At first glance, this information seems too trivial to be of any use to a business. However, when put together, delivery data helps you identify patterns and processes that can be optimized.

For example, you may find that deliveries that start at 6 pm tend to be late or that one delivery territory takes noticeably longer than the rest.

You may also use delivery data to support operational decisions.

Start With the Questions, Not the Data

When faced with the prospect of collecting and analyzing data, it is tempting to overwhelm oneself with information that does not answer any specific questions. Try to adopt the opposite approach and begin with questions that will guide you in the scoping and analysis of data.

Some examples of relevant questions include:

• Are delivery costs increasing?

• Are customers complaining about late deliveries?

• Is the number of deliveries per driver sufficient?

• Are some delivery zones understaffed or particularly challenging?

You can then use these questions as a guideline while searching for patterns in your data.

For example, if you suspect that delivery costs are too high, you may start looking for information on delivery time, routes, traffic-related delays, and driver availability.

Having Specific Questions in Mind Helps You Avoid Getting Overwhelmed by the Amount of Information

Measure the Metrics That Truly Matter

Within the scope of delivery data, not all metrics are equal. Some require more attention and resources than others. As a rule of thumb, focus on delivery performance indicators that impact customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, or profit margins the most.

Below are a few essential delivery data points that you may want to track on a regular basis.

On-Time Delivery

This metric tells you how often your deliveries arrive at the scheduled time.

A low percentage of on-time deliveries may indicate issues with routing, unrealistic delivery timeframes, or a lack of drivers. On the other hand, a consistently high percentage demonstrates that your operations are running smoothly.

Average Delivery Time

This metric tells you how long, on average, it takes for a delivery to be completed.

It is useful to analyze trends in this indicator. For example, if there is a steady increase in average delivery time, you may want to investigate this development and the circumstances under which it occurs.

Failed Delivery Rate

It is natural for businesses to experience failed deliveries sometimes. A significantly higher rate of failed deliveries may point to issues such as incorrect addresses, communication problems with customers, and scheduling errors.

Driver Productivity

You may want to track how many deliveries a driver can make on average, how far they drive on a daily basis, and how much time they spend on the road. This information can then be used to find ways to improve delivery efficiency.

The Bottom Line on Delivery Tracking App

Collecting data on deliveries can be a tedious process, particularly when you have to extract it from random phone calls, texts, and Excel sheets. All this information becomes much more accessible once you equip your business with a delivery tracking app.

Depending on the software, you may see your drivers in real-time or view past delivery data, including locations, times, and delivery attempts, from a single dashboard.

This way, instead of guessing if deliveries were late, you will get concrete answers about which occurrences triggered them.

Having a Clear Picture Means That You Are No Longer Guessing at What Causes Issues, and You Can Take Concrete Steps at Resolving Them.

Even Small Businesses Can Benefit From Delivery Data

While it would seem that delivery analytics is reserved for Fortune 500 corporations, an application for courier management can serve as a tool for smaller companies as well. In fact, they often benefit from the enhanced control that delivery data provides immensely.

For example, a local bakery that has to make 50 deliveries every day may review their delivery data and realize that some neighborhoods take significantly longer to serve. By analyzing delivery information, the bakery can optimize the process in these high-risk areas and, for example, batch deliveries together. This way, it does not have to send two couriers to the same neighborhood on the same day.

A seemingly minor change like this can add up and make a noticeable difference.

Make Decisions Based on Data

At some point, you will have to base your delivery operations decisions on the data that you gathered. For example, if you suspect that one area has consistently longer delivery times than the rest, you may want to look into what causes it and how to resolve the issue.

You can batch deliveries in that neighborhood, choose a different courier for the zone, or send the same driver but earlier in the day. You can also consider adjusting delivery expectations, communicating delays earlier and more transparently with customers, and even rethinking your approach to deliveries in certain neighborhoods.

After implementing a change, it is important to continue monitoring the situation. If everything goes well, you now have a new fact that contributes to your greater understanding of the issue. If the numbers remain the same, you can move on to investigating the circumstances of the delivery process that led to the failure.

This way, you can begin a continuous cycle of discovery and improvement in your delivery operations. The more data you have, the more opportunities there are to ask better questions and, eventually, find answers.

Delivery Data Helps You Become More Customer-Focused

When it comes to delivery data, it is also important to direct some of your analytical efforts toward the consumer side of your operations. For example, you may find that your customers are dissatisfied when they have to wait too long for a delivery. In such cases, it is important to reevaluate customer expectations and possibly update your policies.

You may find that customers who ordered during a certain period are significantly more likely to reorder than the rest of the consumer base. Combine delivery data with your broader customer experience analytics, and you will begin to understand how to improve the consumer journey.

Don’t Get Discouraged by Complexity: Know Your Data

While it may be easy to get lost in the endless scope of delivery analytics, it is best to direct your efforts to a few important questions and a small set of metrics.

As your business delivery operations grow and become more complex, so will the need for more detailed delivery data. Use it to make your business decisions more informed but avoid getting overwhelmed by attempting to collect and analyze every possible byte of information.

The More Data You Have, the Easier It Becomes To Rethink Your Strategic and Tactical Assumptions as Well as Make Day-to-Day Operational Decisions.

Final Thoughts

Delivery data is one of those tools that may seem intimidating at first but becomes indispensable after some time. A delivery tracking app helps you transform information on your deliveries into something greater than the sum of its parts and guides you through the process of doing that. For a small company, a delivery tracking app for a small business provides increased control that helps it optimize its limited resources.

The companies that are the most successful at using delivery data are not those that gather the most information but rather the ones that have learned to extract value from it. Use this guide as a springboard into the world of delivery analytics and begin with some simple questions and a few key performance indicators.