Delivery management platform Locus has added a new integration to its Dispatch Management Platform that allows retailers to optimize last-mile delivery while maintaining profitability.
Delivery Linked Checkout is an enhancement to the platform, allowing retailers to optimize deliveries via capacity-led slot bookings, multiple delivery windows, customer-friendly post-fulfillment experiences and route optimization.
“A single bad delivery can completely make or break a consumer’s perception of a brand,” said Nishith Rastogi, founder and CEO of Locus. “But everything from limited fulfillment capacity to inefficient route planning and disconnected systems managing last-mile operations continue to put retailers at risk of failed execution.”
Locus said Delivery Linked Checkout enables retailers to deliver orders on the customer-preferred timeline while maintaining optimal capacity and service efficiencies for the business.
“To solidify fulfillment as an impactful point of differentiation, a driver of brand loyalty and a growth enabler, retailers need to directly connect their logistics operations with the customer experience,” Rastogi said. “Locus’ Delivery Linked Checkout, in combination with our Dispatch Management Platform, offers a unique proposition for retailers to secure profitability while enhancing customer satisfaction.”
Key features include:
- Optimizing deliveries: This feature accounts for available capacity, logistics costs and business constraints, identifying and offering only the available slots upon checkout for end-consumers.
- Multiple delivery window options: This provides a wide range of preferred delivery options across 10-minute, express, two-hour, same-day or next-day fulfillment so retailers can satisfy customer expectations and capture a broader set of shopper segments. The feature also incentivizes customer loyalty by unlocking preferred delivery windows for high-value customers.
- Customer-friendly post-fulfillment journey: This allows customers to choose alternate dates and times for shipment delivery even after order dispatch. It also enables them to cancel an order via the tracking page.
- Route optimization: This feature creates precise delivery schedules by factoring in customer availability, clustering deliveries and reverse shipments from the same service areas to limit the instances of reattempts and failed deliveries. It also gives customers options to choose sustainable delivery time slots that facilitate more carbon-efficient route plans.
In June, Locus unveiled its order-to-dispatch delivery management solution that combines all the components for a successful last-mile delivery into an integrated platform.
The platform utilizes optimization algorithms and workflow automation to learn from previous outcomes to improve dispatch planning, scheduling and routing. The data insights also increase visibility, capacity and carrier management under an integrated application programming interface-ready solution, the company said.
Initially founded as a women’s safety app, the company pivoted from its early beginnings to become involved in the routing business, helping usher in the era of 60- to 90-minute delivery in Southeast Asia, Rastogi said. The company also has operations in the U.S. and Australia.
While Locus provided routing technology in the early days, Rastogi previously told Modern Shipper that customers “were building on top of it.”
Clearly, though, customers had more demands, so Locus introduced its end-to-end solution to address those.
Designed for shippers, 3PLs and carriers, it starts managing the last mile long before an item reaches the truck. The technology looks at what the delivery capacity is at time of order. It then handles the management and automation of that order before adding dispatch planning and allocations to the proper delivery provider (in-house versus outsourced or maybe a hybrid model).
Once that is all determined, it executes on the dispatch (including a customer service dashboard), before providing a reconciliation process.