The transportation and logistics industry has historically lagged behind its peers with respect to digitalization. Termed by the World Economic Forum as ‘potentially catastrophic,’ this lag is attributable to heavy dependence on legacy processes and systems. Although the players are gradually picking up momentum in automating and digitizing freight processes, full-fledged adoption of digital technologies must remain at the backdrop to successfully navigate the trajectory.

“Transport companies today must practice data-driven operations. They require tools to digitalize, improve the efficiency and quality of their day-to-day processes, and meet the growing expectations of their B2B clients,” says Jon Perslow, vice president of pinDeliver.

The company is a forerunner in this ever-growing realm of digital transformation in logistics. It empowers logistics and transportation businesses to embark on their transformation journeys with its comprehensive, easy-to-use, and cost-effective transport planning tool that covers the gamut of logistics.

As multinational organizations and enterprises attempt to build supply chain resilience and address rising consumer needs through digital transformation, pinDeliver’s cloud-based platform–also named pinDeliver–streamlines and digitalizes the transportation processes and makes last-mile profitable.

pinDeliver’s next-generation TMS is a scalable system that enables businesses to reduce manual work and gain complete control over their transportation operations. The platform is backed by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), including intuitive driver support modules, customer communication applications, and real-time tracking of last-mile deliveries.

“Our next-gen platform addresses the challenges associated with last-mile logistics while enabling businesses to manage the warehouse aspects of transportation,” adds Perslow.

A Modern, Scalable, Powerful Platform for All Things Logistics

Due to the rapid growth of e-commerce in the last few decades, many logistics and transportation businesses struggle to manage their last-mile deliveries and remain competitive in the market. To convert their last-mile delivery bottlenecks into leading edges, these businesses can use pinDeliver’s OFFICE app to execute their transport management and customer service operations, plan their routes, and follow up with customers.

Functioning as a collaborator, the module offers support for a myriad of transport flows, from consolidated distributions and transhipments at terminals to end-point deliveries. In addition, pinDeliver’s OFFICE application gives managers a comprehensive view of goods arriving and departing from terminals, enabling them to better contextualize their information and improve decision-making and bottom lines.

For picking, consolidating, and loading orders, pinDeliver offers its HUB app that enables warehouse managers and workers to streamline their workflows, replace manual work, and eliminate the risk of errors.

The module digitally maps all deliveries and analyzes their environmental footprint. Warehouse workers can scan barcodes and collect critical information about the location of packages and the middlemen handling them. For transport managers who have routes planned and recorded in documents, the module offers quick and easy import functionality, where they can seamlessly upload all route information into the pinDeliver platform within minutes.

The platform then suggests routes to managers and gives a full overview of the deliveries and associated resources. Users can assign routes to their own drivers or sub-contractors.

With these optimized deliveries, businesses can improve the quality of their operations and customer experience while freeing up valuable processing time they can use to focus on mission-critical tasks.

In an event of deviation from predetermined schedules, transport managers can use pinDeliver to proactively communicate discrepancies with involved parties and suggest improvements to enhance the efficiency and profitability of the overall delivery process. When businesses secure new customers, they can quickly examine how to most optimally address their requirements within existing routes.

Augmenting the efficiency of this planning is pinDeliver’s peerless functionality that enables transport managers to plan both pickups and deliveries. At the same time, the platform analyzes vehicles’ load capacity and available space and suggests additional pickup or deliveries, enabling drivers to achieve more in a single delivery process.

“These real-time calculations are impossible to do by hand and pinDeliver performs them within seconds,” elaborates Perslow.

Doubling down on its innovative stance is pinDeliver’s intuitive GO app, designed specifically for drivers.

With GO, drivers receive a detailed schedule, traffic information, GPS-supported navigation, and more. The application also allows them to take signatures on mobile devices, photograph deliveries, communicate with supervisors, manage route deviations, and eliminate unnecessary administrative work. Everything registered by the drivers is automatically and instantly synced to OFFICE, giving managers real-time updates for each delivery.

Since drivers are typically a hard crowd to please with respect to technology, GO is ingrained with high levels of user-friendliness, flexibility, and efficiency. To make the delivery process more personalized and comprehensible, pinDeliver offers to-do lists and work reports where drivers can track and view their progress.

“Our objective is to make the drivers shine,” says Perslow. “We want to make their everyday life as easy as possible.” In doing so, businesses enhance the performance of their drivers, offer a great experience and a perfect last impression on recipients.

Delivering More than Just Products– Delivering An Experience

“In a world where products and services are growing more commoditized, customer experience is the only true differentiator.”

Internationally recognized customer experience thought leader Annette Franz’s words truly embody the importance of ensuring a satisfactory customer experience. This philosophy is the bedrock of pinDeliver’s customer-centric operations.

As recipients are most curious about the arrival of their packages, pinDeliver’s GET app allows businesses to send real-time updates via text or e-mail and provide estimated delivery times. Customers can track the delivery provider on a map, can check the number of stops left, provide delivery instructions, re-schedule a planned delivery, and get proof of delivery and arrange return pickups. At the end of each delivery, they can anonymously rate the delivery and share feedback. For transportation service companies and product owners, GET can be customized and re-branded with logotypes and specific colour schemes, offering a truly unique and personalized experience.

To further enhance the effectiveness of last-mile deliveries, pinDeliver offers its back-end customer support services where different stakeholders can follow up with customers in case of lost packages or unknown delivery status and manage deviations.

“pinDeliver is built on transparency. End customers, drivers, managers, and warehouse workers all have access to the same information, but in different interfaces,” adds Perslow.

Using its customization functionalities, businesses can design interfaces with different levels of accessibility and views, offering each party a seamless, easily understandable, and personalized view.

With these customer-oriented feature sets, businesses can substantially reduce customer service calls, offer more clarity to recipients, and build trust-based relationships, fundamentally improving customer satisfaction and long-term retention.

pinDeliver can be flawlessly integrated with auxiliary systems–order management, e-commerce platforms, WMS, TA, and more–using APIs to gain holistic control over all operations under a single pane of glass and foster a trustworthy inter-departmental exchange of information. pinDeliver chronicles all events associated with deliveries and can produce evidence for dispute resolution.

Substantiating its capabilities is the interaction with market leading restaurant wholesaler, Martin&Servera. Thay have four central warehouses and more than 20 distribution hubs across Sweden, making 6,000 daily deliveries. Martin&Servera have integrated pinDeliver with its existing business tools to manage all logistics operations. Their warehouse team uses HUB to scan parcels and make terminal operations more efficient before line-haul transportation and then final distribution pinDeliver enables Martin&Servera to seamlessly manage, digitalize, and improve its logistics domain, obtaining full transparency of all details linked to their logistic operation. Another example of collaboration is with GDL Transport AB, where pinDeliver accommodated requirements from the client to reduce the workload of traffic controllers by 30 percent

Raising the Benchmark of Innovation and Environmental Sustainability

Though the benefits of pinDeliver speak for themselves, what enables the company to deliver exceptional outcomes is a culture that prioritizes innovation and sustainability.

The bedrock of pinDeliver’s company culture is its commitment to developing and revolutionizing the logistics industry and last-mile deliveries. It encourages creative ideas from its teams, who collaborate, support, and learn from each other to promote out-of-the-box thinking.

In line with the same, pinDeliver’s team is actively contributing to Sustainable Development Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities by offering affordable and sustainable transportation systems.

The transportation industry is among the biggest contributors to carbon emissions and degraded air quality. pinDeliver is proactively changing this narrative.

Utilizing optimized routes, businesses can reduce the environmental impact of their operations, reduce carbon emissions, and create a sustainable transportation ecosystem. With features like coordinated distribution, fill rate optimization, EV options, and more, pinDeliver provides customers with the opportunity to make environmentally friendly choices.

Last-mile delivery and our environment, both benefit greatly from pinDeliver.

As the transportation sector advances toward unprecedented growth, coupled with the immediate need for decarbonization, pinDeliver will bear the torch of innovation and lead the world toward attaining environmental sustainability through digitally transforming logistics.