Selco Builders Warehouse says a new transport planning platform is helping it to further improve customer service and save money.
The merchant provides a trade-only retail-style experience through its 68 UK branches. In 2019 it opened its first distribution hub for ‘heavy side’ builders’ products in Edmonton, North London, to service the delivery requirements for six of its branches. Selco is using My Transport Planner to further improve and streamline this hub operation.
My Transport Planner is a pay-as-you-go, web-based platform. It uses powerful route optimisation algorithms to optimise routes and delivery schedules, improving productivity while reducing costs and total fleet mileage.
Richard Evans, Head of Transport Operations at Selco, believes that My Transport Planner has solved several key issues for the business, especially for products with out-of-gauge profiles.
“One of the benefits of the optimisation platform is that it removes any element of human fallibility and subjectivity,” he said. “Making efficiency improvements is a given. This product is a gamechanger for us. It’s allowing us to embrace efficiencies even with abnormal loads, which other products simply couldn’t give us.
“We had looked for a long time for a system which could optimise what we term ‘complex and dirty loads’ where the consignment doesn’t fit into standard pallet sizes,” he added. “With My Transport Planner we can put all orders on the system and then optimise them by vehicle. This will improve our customer experience, which was our first objective, although it will undoubtedly bring cost benefits as well.”
Selco is currently upgrading to My Transport Planner Pro, which includes additional features including fully automated optimisation and mobile apps. This will include automatically sending each driver their optimised schedule; electronic proof of delivery; messaging by voice or email; and managing daily vehicle checks in with the company’s vehicle pre-use check policy.
“We anticipate huge gains in productivity and utilisation across the network with My Transport Planner Pro, achieving our aim of making our customer experience the best in the industry,” said Richard. “However, we will also see substantial cost improvements in vehicle usage.”
My Transport Planner is currently offering a free 30-day trial to help companies adjusting to operating during a pandemic. To register for the free trial, visit www.mytransportplanner.com.
