Braehead Foods, one of Scotland’s largest independent food wholesalers, is working with PODFather to optimise routes and streamline proof of delivery processes across its UK wide operation. With a fleet of 20 vehicles, and over 1,300 hotel and restaurant customers to serve, Braehead Foods needed a solution that could help modernise its manual transport planning process. PODFather is now used daily to plan driver routes, track vehicle movements, and capture electronic proof of delivery in real time. As a result, the Braehead Foods team is seeing huge benefit – in the form of significant reductions in mileage, driving time and fuel – which equate to a financial saving of over £80,000 a year.
“PODFather is a fantastic system. When we first introduced it there was some hesitancy across the business, from both management and drivers, but as our savings show its introduction has had a huge impact on the way we run our growing business,” comments Andy Clark, Director at Braehead Foods. “We now rely on it every day to create optimised routes for our drivers. This has made a significant difference as the system automatically handles customer delivery windows, opening times and access constraints which makes all our lives a lot easier.”
Each of Braehead Food’s drivers has been issued with a basic Android smartphone on which to run the PODFather app. Once installed the app allows the Braehead planning team to send job information to each driver with all the relevant details relating to specific delivery drop locations; drivers can also gather and log all vehicle check information. Once a drop is complete the driver can collect customer proof of delivery – photo and signature – and submit this back to the transport office in real time. “The PODFather driver app is so intuitive that even our most non-technical drivers have gotten to grips with it really quickly,” adds Clark. “It makes a big difference to how our drivers work; it’s definitely a much easier and more reliable delivery tracking process than the manual, paper-based one we had before.”
The improvements PODFather is delivering are being felt beyond the transport team within Braehead Foods, with customer services and accounts departments seeing the immediate benefit of real time visibility of driver drops and completed PODs. Customer service calls have reduced and time to invoice has been slashed as PODFather facilitates the fast flow of real time information across the whole business. “The admin around planning and executing deliveries has been dramatically reduced. For starters we are no longer having to call drivers to check where they are, and what time they think they are going to arrive at a customer site. PODFather tells us everything we need to know when we need to know it,” concludes Clark.
“Braehead Foods is an excellent example of how the PODFather solution can transform how a business operates,” adds Colin McCreadie, Managing Director of PODFather. “Our functionality rich, yet easy to use, system ensures that a wide range of business units – from transport through to customer service and accounts – can benefit from the introduction of our cloud-based optimisation and delivery management solution. To be able to report a saving of £80,000, which has been realized in a matter of months, is a huge achievement for the Braehead Foods team and we’re delighted be able to support them as they continue to develop their use of the PODFather solution.”
