Case study: Frankonia
A prestigious bakery is establishing a successful home delivery operation, thanks to new specialist software.
Frankonia supplies some of London’s most famous hotels and restaurants with bread and vienoisserie, using three Mercedes Sprinter vans. The company decided to move into home delivery during lockdown and wanted a software platform to plan the most efficient routes. After trying several different systems, the company settled on My Transport Planner, the UK’s first fully pay-as-you-go route optimisation platform.
Kevin Devine, Company Secretary of Frankonia, said: “Like many wholesale businesses we had to pivot quite radically during the first lockdown. We had never done home delivery before and I wanted to do it right, so I was looking at route optimisation software.
“We had one system in place for about six months, but it was just too clunky. Then someone recommended My Transport Planner to us and it was perfect. The switch over was very easy and it is much easier to use than the system we had before.”
My Transport Planner is unique in that users do not have to pay a monthly subscription fee – they simply buy credits and use them as required. This makes route optimisation much more affordable and accessible for small and medium-sized operators. The key benefits are reduced planning time and up to 20 per cent lower total mileage, translating into total cost savings of up to 30 per cent.
“Being able to use it on a pay-as-you-go basis is a real benefit for us,” added Kevin. “Also, a lot of other systems were over-specified for our needs, meaning I was paying for features I would never use. My Transport Planner is built the other way around – you start with the standard features and can add more if you need them.
“We have a few vans on the road, not hundreds, and we don’t plan ages in advance, so My Transport Planner is perfect for us. It has definitely helped our drivers because the delivery schedules are always different. It takes the stress out of it for them. The wholesale routes are fixed – some of them have been the same for years – but home delivery was very different for our drivers.”
Using powerful algorithms, My Transport Planner has been designed for multi-drop delivery and collection operations. Users simply upload all jobs, vehicles and drivers, and the algorithm plans all routes and schedules in the most efficient way possible.
“My Transport Planner has been a godsend for our home delivery operation and our experience has been really positive,” said Kevin. “It was really easy to set up and the interface is very user-friendly. We are definitely saving time and money as it plans very quickly and plans every route in the most logical, efficient way. In our ISO 14001 certification, we included route optimisation as one of our objectives, as it is proven to cut total mileage.”