Axional Mobile PUD
An Android™-Based Pickup & Delivery Management System
The mailing and shipping industry is always hunting for ways to reduce costs and increase customer retention in their extremely competitive environment. Automating processes will enable mailing, shipping, and courier companies to better serve their customers and reduce associated operational costs, which are critical factors for maintaining strong customer relationships and building a successful business in the long term.
The primary work of the courier service industry is carried out in an on-the-go environment; it is absolutely critical to provide field employees with the information they need, while simultaneously having complete process visibility in the back office. A system with these capabilities will help reduce wasted time at each stop, increase accuracy by eliminating errors in data recording, and improve operational efficiency.
Axional PUD offers a powerful solution for managing routes and deliveries. It operates in real time on standard mobile devices for on-the-go, door-to-door delivery operations.
This product fulfills the requirements of your onsite personnel. Its features include:
- Scheduling of pickups and deliveries, including ad-hoc pickups
- Route calculation
- Stop control
- Proof of delivery (POD) and chain of custody
- Cash on delivery (COD)
- Regulatory and customer compliance
- Control of events such as overages, shortages, and damages
- Management of returns
- Monitoring
- Productivity and operational reports and alerts
The system can operate both in real time and offline, and will help reduce errors and losses while improving customer service. Your company can gain a real competitive advantage using Axional PUD.
Features
Scheduling of pickups and deliveries
The work plan (task scheduler) is defined from the central system. This organizer is made up by a list of Pickup Orders or Delivery Orders (DOs) sent automatically from the central dispatching system.
This personalized organizer is transmitted to the corresponding mobile device, where DOs with the following options are shown:
- View by hours of the scheduled DOs.
- View by customers’ physical address and route from current location to destination.
- Delivery list (ID and description of each package).
- Technical documentation and instructions.
- Comment fields and notes regarding delivery/pickup.
Through real-time dispatching, the system allows for ad-hoc pickups for specific customers while, at the same time, reducing the number of ad-hoc routes.
Several routing and mileage features are offered by the system:
- Address-to-address routing, with multiple stops
- Full-color interactive maps
- Detailed driving directions
- Costs by route
The calculation of an optimized route with multiple points of delivery (over 20) can take up significant computing time, delaying dispatchers and drivers’ work. To overcome this problem, the system uses an effective genetic algorithm to reduce the number of boundary nodes and road sections, obtaining an optimized route in a matter of seconds. It provides a complete itinerary with the travel time between each segment as well as the distance.
The system monitors the drivers’ stops to ensure they occur at exactly the right locations. At the point of delivery, the driver scans items listed in the Delivery and Pickup Order. Axional PUD confirms address, consignee, and item information. Recipient signature is captured as delivery confirmation. If the recipient is not available, the driver can log a geographical location and timestamp and, if required, can capture a digital image of the drop-off location to confirm positive identification.
The delivery or pickup information is transmitted to the central system in real time. If no connection is available, Axional PUD will retry as soon as connectivity is restored. In this way, customer service gains immediate access to package status.
The system is barcode-enabled. Packages are all barcoded and scanned for real-time updates and tracking.
Proof of delivery (POD) and chain of custody
With the automated proof of delivery provided by Axional PUD, companies will substantially reduce errors, increase driver productivity, and improve their service level by keeping their operators and customers better informed. The system allows for:
- Proof of delivery through image or signature capture
- Generate complete proof-of-delivery and chain-of-custody documentation
Tracking confidential and proprietary information online, from pickup through delivery, is essential to maintaining your customer’s trust. Axional PUD includes tracking capabilities for sensitive, confidential information or products. The system tracks electronic evidence from the moment drivers receive the package, and its reports provide the information needed to demonstrate the chain of custody was not compromised.
Cash on delivery (COD)
The system includes the COD collection capabilities. The waybill and electronic invoicing is generated in the back office, allowing the application of price adjustments and discounts tailored to each customer. The system can even send special shipment- or customer-related instructions to the courier’s device.
The mobile device supports online payment processing and can be configured to accept any type of payment (cards, cash, checks, etc.). It includes a cash audit feature to determine that all cash received is properly recorded and that the balance matches cash on hand and/or on deposit. The interface is very user-friendly and resembles a point of sale (POS) device, in order to speed up payment collection.
Compliance with regulations and guidelines
In many industries, regulations regarding health and safety oblige the delivery/pickup process to be carried out in line with established protocols. These protocols may be imposed by regulatory requirements or by customer guidelines.
Axional PUD allows package handling instructions to be pushed to the mobile device. By guiding your drivers step-by-step, managers will ensure that protocols, as well as company procedures, are adhered to for greater accountability.
During customer audits, Axional PUD includes features that will help prove that activities were executed according to regulations.
The delivery or pickup order shown on the mobile device provides the driver with all the information needed to resolve discrepancies. When completing the DO, the driver will easily be able to identify missing scans.
In case of shortages, the software displays all relative reference numbers for the DO, making it easy to pinpoint the error and make necessary corrections on the spot.
Overages and damages happen. Axional PUD employs data collection and imaging technology to display stock counts and condition. When a damaged package is found, photos and sketches can be recorded in the mobile device. Specific comments or notes can be added as well. The recipient’s signature is captured to prevent future disputes.
When drivers identify overages, they can scan the barcodes of leftover packages and send the information to the central dispatching system.
Axional PUD helps physically track returns on behalf of customers. The system ensures that documents or packages that need to be signed and returned safely are properly handled. The driver will only need to complete the acceptance of the return order by performing a few scans.
The system also includes return trip signatures to provide proof of item return, time of return, and the identities of those who authorized it.
The option to convert a one-way DO into a round-trip DO on the spot also exists. This is a very convenient feature for industries where returns are very common.
Using Axional PUD, dispatchers can send detailed information about orders, stops and packages to drivers. At each stop, drivers will provide real-time delivery status updates, using barcode scanning and recipient signature capture. The system also allows for SMS messaging to communicate with drivers.
Axional PUD includes a complete audit trail. The system logs all changes that are made to DOs, scheduled stops, and ad-hoc pickups. That information is timestamped and location stamped, then sent to corporate systems, providing dispatchers with updates on package status and driver location almost in real time.
As drivers complete pickups or deliveries, Axional PUD will provide a real-time update of delivery status.
From central systems, dispatchers have constant access to reliable information on how operations in the field are developing, enhancing the effectiveness of their responses. Axional PUD offers the following functions:
- Real-time task organizer modification. Urgent deliveries can be planned from the central system and sent to the assigned driver, whose organizer is instantaneously updated.
- The system shows the status of the driver’s assigned DOs, and is capable of managing canceled DOs or DOs pending completion due to an unforeseen issue.
- Operating cost calculators to help owners, drivers, and transport operators determine their vehicle and courier costs.
- Invoicing based on mileage reports and other operating costs.
The system includes a number of statistics about the work carried out, so that operators can monitor the extent to which established goals have been met. These statistics show the most important KPIs used in the industry:
Operational KPIs
- Percentage recorded as empty: Percentage of miles/kilometers/trips that carried no inventory/freight.
- Optimized Load Fulfillment (OLF): Percentage of actual load vs. standard payload of carrier.
- Percentage of goods undamaged after shipping/transportation.
- Vehicle time usage: Time that vehicles are used, as a percentage of total planned or available utilization time.
- Average quantity per shipment.
- Average number of stops per trip/vehicle.
- Average fuel amount per package.
- Net ton kilometer (NTKM): The summation of every one ton moved per kilometer. This KPI takes into account changes in load as well as distance.
- Fuel usage per ton per kilometer.
- Greenhouse gases emitted per kilometer traveled, and average greenhouse gas emissions per vehicle in a fleet
Service Level
- Overall transportation quality of service: Quality of service is measured by comparing the number of shipments arrived within the target for the transport with the actual LT for the transport.
- Percentage of orders delivered with damaged products/items.
- Ratio of damages as percentage of throughput.
- On-time pickups: Calculated by dividing the number of pickups made on time (by a specific carrier) by the total number of shipments in a period.
- On-time delivery and pickup: Percentage of shipments which were delivered on time within the total number of shipments.
- Ad-hoc transportation requests rate: Measures the percentage of ad-hoc transportation requests fulfilled.
- Transit time: Measured by the number of hours between the time a shipment leaves the facility and the time it arrives at the customer’s location.
- Percentage of orders/items which arrive at the correct location.
Financial
- Claims as percentage of freight costs: Calculated by dividing total loss and damage claims by total freight costs.
- Percentage of costs attributed to free delivery orders: Percentage of total transportation costs occupied by the cost of free orders delivered as a sample or bonus.
- Average freight revenue per ton-mile.
- Accessorial charges as percent of total freight: Calculated by dividing accessorial charges and surcharges by total freight expenditure for the period.
- Ratios of fuel costs by ton-mile.
- Freight cost per unit shipped: Calculated by dividing total freight cost by number of units shipped per period.
- Invoicing accuracy: Calculated by dividing the number of error-free freight bills by the total number of freight bills in the period.
The system also includes a full set of back office functions to facilitate the management of physical fleets of vehicles, among them:
- Management of all types of vehicle contracts (rented, leased, owned).
- Management of vehicle maintenance plans.
- Scheduling of official vehicle inspection in examination centers.
- Digital management of official documentation.
- Handling of fines and penalties by vehicle and driver.
- Management of specific transport payment cards (for fuel, tolls, parking, etc.).
The system can be either tightly or loosely coupled. It can work independently of network service, locally storing information when a driver is working in a dead zone and quickly synchronizing with the server when a connection becomes available.
When a connection is not available, data is captured and stored on the mobile device. The validity of stored data is checked directly on the mobile device. Once a connection is available, all information is immediately transferred without requiring user intervention.
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