While delivery software and courier software may sound like the same thing, they’re built for entirely different operations. Where delivery software assumes you know what you’re delivering tomorrow, next week, maybe even next month, courier software operates under the pretense that you have no idea what’s coming in for the next twenty minutes.
And that distinction changes everything.
The Planning Timeline Gap
Standard delivery is dependent upon a schedule; whether things are being sent in bulk or just one at a time, a company has advanced notice of what’s on its plate. Customers order items from Amazon, expect delivery in two to three days. Delivery companies have the opportunity to plan.
Courier work, however, has no luxury. A customer wants something picked up at 2:00 pm and delivered at 2:15 pm, but it takes an employee ten minutes to find their paperwork. Their meeting at 2:30 pm may include a critical presentation. A company needs the document back across town by 3:30. There’s no overnight batching things together. There’s no time for a careful review of projected fees and estimated arrival times before jumping into action.
Where can the closest driver pick the item up? Is that time-frame reasonable? Courier systems need to have all of this information outputted as quickly as possible. Software based on traditional scheduled deliveries will try to batch things together and optimize them overnight as if they had a day to solve the problem.
Immediate Pricing Needs
With regular delivery, costs are often zone-based or flat rates. If you are sending within this postal code, you will pay this much. It creates a low-stress table setting that everyone can anticipate.
With courier services, however, pricing becomes far more complex. The distance and timing matter exponentially. Is it being sent same-day? How quickly does it need to go – two hour windows vs. four-hour? Is it a large item that requires a van? Will there be multiple stops required?
A courier management system must be able to assess these pricing structuring ideas immediately – and then relay them to customers upon request – based on current locations, potential drivers, and assumed ETAs without an employee having to calculate everything manually.
Where standard delivery software is concerned, such variable pricing isn’t typical because jobs need quotes and booking immediately (within minutes) rather than a drawn-out process of time-sensitive evaluation.
Multiple Stops Per Job
Where traditional deliveries are concerned, one stops means one job. Load the truck with ten packages all going in the same direction and return once they’re dropped off. Each item is its own separate job with one destination.
With the courier industry, however, that is not the case. I have documents I need picked up from location A, I want copies delivered to locations B and C, and I want the originals returned to location D. That’s one job – but four stops – and the order of operations is crucial.
Where software is concerned, this requires treating it as one job for billing and communications with the customer but understanding it’s multiple jobs for routing and time purposes. However, regular delivery software assumes each stop is its separate job, confusing anyone trying to track and bill who is simply engaged in one multi-stop run.
Vehicle Type Consideration
Most regular delivery operations have standardized fleets; everyone drives the same types of vans or trucks, minimizing maintenance problems for general accuracy.
In courier operations, however, this is not the case. Someone could be sending a small envelope by motorcycle or car. Large items require a van; palletized freight needs a truck with a lift gate; some jobs require refrigeration while others require secure delivery with active insurance.
Courier software needs to accommodate this job-to-vehicle mapping where systems acknowledge which drivers have which types and only assign appropriate jobs; alternatively, pricing needs to differ based on what needs to be sent out since sending an entire truck costs more than sending a car.
Return Trips and Failed Deliveries
In standard delivery – whether you were handling moving companies or the post office – if you send something and nobody’s home or ready or it’s not safe to drop off, it becomes a different situation for redelivery tomorrow. It’s not ideal but it’s manageable.
For couriers, failed deliveries are expensive endeavors. That same-day document could’ve changed everything and now it needs to come back – it poses a problem for the customer; it poses a problem to the new deadlines for those now backlogged; it requires immediate rerouting of someone back across town or figuring out who pays.
Courier systems should analyze attempted deliveries, trigger communications with customers that something failed, adjust billing structures for returns/redeliveries or new jobs composed on the fly for immediate redelivery.
Real-time Capacity Determination
Companies generally know their capacity when it comes to deliveries. They have x number of trucks running y numbers of routes; as orders come in, they fill in their capacity until no one else can drive anything more for the day.
Courier companies don’t just operate this way – they make capacity determinations every second as their drivers complete jobs. Can we take this job now? Which driver is in the best situation? Is anyone nearby? The answer changes every time someone else gets dropped off or given new orders.
Software must allow real-time determination for dispatcher communications about whether they can take work based upon current situation (and there’s always one). Pricing must accommodate based on whether things can be taken simply to avoid overage hours.
Comprehensive Customer Communication
Customers using standard delivery systems generally expect tracking but they’re not obsessively looking at it every minute; they know it’s coming sometime this week and they’ll know shortly before it arrives if they even get a notification.
Courier customers are paying significantly higher prices for time-sensitive expectations; they want to know what occurs every second – from when they’ve picked up through where they are now through current ETAs through whether delivery has happened yet or not.
Thus, frequency and depth of communication increases in volume when manual operation would otherwise take up someone’s entire day just giving these updates out on every time-sensitive courier job.
Intricate Pricing Systems/Billing Requirements
Charges assessed with standard delivery occur monthly on average per volume; a company is responsible for its 100 packages for the month all getting invoiced by months end for proper projection.
For couriers, however, it’s typically job by job – and with greater detail. Each job has its own path (often minutiae) that requires immediate proven delivery back to customers needing reimbursement and client-invoicing reasons.
The system should compile pricing per job basis quickly; should invoice accordingly and attach proof of delivery automatically; and should be able to analyze complex pricing systems that differ across customers/jobs/urgency/and more than another dozen factors that impact day-to-day operations.
Why This Is Important
To attempt to do all of this within standard delivery software means a constant workaround will occur. Pricing gets manually assessed, where jobs get tracked in spreadsheets alongside what the system offers; communication comes through phone calls; billing requires manual-overage adjustments because there’s always more behind-the-scenes than there should be in front.
A proper courier management system assesses all of these unique needs organically because this is what it’s been made to do. The work still needs a careful eye, but at least the tools match what should be an organically through process instead of constantly fighting against it.
