What is grocery delivery software? Quick tips to address 4 key grocery delivery challenges
By Komal Puri | October 13, 2022
Grocery delivery software is gaining immense popularity as customer expectations evolve. The U.S. online grocery industry has evolved to become a lucrative space fueling high levels of competition. According to a Statista report, sales in the U.S. online grocery market will reach $29.7 billion by 2021. But getting a bigger share of this pie isn’t easy. The ones that can guarantee delightful delivery experiences and at the same time boost their bottom line will be the ones tasting the sweet taste of victory.
The online grocery businesses often face the heat when executing home delivery operations. Challenges like inconsistent delivery experience, inexperienced third-party delivery providers, poor visibility and more often take the better out of grocery businesses.
What is grocery delivery software?
Grocery delivery software helps grocers scale delivery operations, ensure on-time deliveries, boost customer experience, automate key delivery processes like scheduling and task allocation and also makes deliveries profitable.
What are the challenges in grocery delivery?
Inconsistent Delivery Experience
Owing to the rapid increase in demand for frequent home deliveries, grocery chains in the US are heavily dependent on more than one logistics provider. From an end-customer perspective, this becomes a challenge, as tracking multiple transporters carrying multiple shipments is a tedious task and often results in errors and inaccurate information being passed on. This challenge can be easily addressed by a modern grocery delivery platform.
Unreliable Third-Party Delivery Providers
Today, in the U.S., it is possible to get goods delivered at low prices. But the problem lies in the fact that these low-cost deliveries are mostly shouldered by delivery service providers who have opened shop recently, making them unreliable in the short term.
Poor Visibility of Freight Movement
As much as 22% of supply chain professionals say ‘poor visibility’ is their number one organizational challenge, a Statista study highlights. Lack of visibility makes tracking freight in-transit extremely difficult. This results in unnecessary delays, inadequate proof of delivery, poor route planning and more.
Lack of Control Over Delivery Operations
Managing multiple delivery service providers and poor visibility of fleet movement make it extremely difficult for logistics stakeholders to efficiently manage delivery processes. Things like allocating tasks, ensuring an error-free delivery sequence and managing customer expectations become a problem when dealing with multiple service providers.
How an Advanced Grocery Delivery System Can Help
Advanced online grocery delivery software or grocery tracking software can empower businesses to generate delightful customer experiences and make every delivery profitable. Here are six ways FarEye is helping grocers gain better control over there logistics operations.
Seamless Integration of Grocery Delivery Platform
Modern online grocery delivery software integrates with existing OMS, WMS, TMS, ERPs, and 3PL systems to boost end-to-end visibility of delivery processes, gain critical insights into a service provider’s KPIs, ensure data-driven decision making and more.
Efficient Management of Multiple Service Providers
To scale delivery operations grocery chains are heavily dependent on multiple logistics providers. An advanced grocery delivery platform ensures high levels of consistency while managing third-party delivery agents. For instance, such a platform leverages Digital Control Towers (DCT) to ensure grocery chains can access disparate delivery KPIs of trucks belonging to different service providers on a single dashboard, instead of investing time and effort by individually connecting with each provider. DCT also provides real-time visibility of all ground-level activities. Therefore, helping delivery stakeholders gain better insights into delays, ETAs, exceptions and more.
Enhanced Productivity
To thrive in today’s highly demanding online grocery marketplace, businesses need to make delivery operations extremely productive.
An enterprise-grade grocery delivery management software ensures that every delivery has a defined ‘standard of excellence’ based on highly accurate KPI benchmarks. User-friendly mobile applications empower drivers to religiously follow efficient delivery routes. It helps delivery stakeholders to manage and control job allocation, routing, sequence and also facilitates real-time communication with customers.
Scalable Delivery Operations
The ability to scale delivery operations is imperative to quickly respond to demand spikes. A modern online grocery delivery platform leverages intelligent crowdsourcing capabilities to seamlessly onboard delivery agents across hundreds of markets. It outsources delivery tasks based on cost, proximity, previous performance, and delivery urgency.
Margin Improvement
By reducing miles per delivery, ensuring intelligent task allocation, scaling operations, improving visibility and ensuring greater productivity, such a platform empowers grocery businesses, especially the ones with tight budgets, to gain better margins.
There are a plethora of challenges online grocery delivery software can solve. But while some problems are common across the industry, there are others that are very unique to a particular grocery chain. FarEye can address these grocery delivery challenges and make your online delivery operations resistant to a constantly changing business environment. To learn more, sign up for a quick demo here.
Komal Puri is a seasoned professional in the logistics and supply chain industry. As the Senior Director of Marketing and a subject matter expert at FarEye, she has been instrumental in shaping the industry narrative for the past decade. Her expertise and insights have earned her numerous awards and recognition. Komal’s writings reflect her deep understanding of the industry, offering valuable insights and thought leadership.
