When owners & managers of businesses and non-profits manually plan routes for deliveries, pick-ups, and service calls, they typically aren’t thinking about the hidden costs of manual route planning. If those owners & managers calculated what it really costs to manually plan routes for their fleet vehicles, they would immediately deploy an affordable route planning software tool like RouteSavvy.
Hidden Costs Of Manual Route Planning – WASTED TIME
When owners & managers of businesses & non-profits spend hours each day, or the night before, manually planning routes for the next day’s deliveries, pick-ups, or service calls, they’re losing time that can never be recovered. That wasted time could be applied to any number of more productive endeavors: business planning & strategy, customer outreach, and marketing, to name a few. For those owners & managers spending time in the evenings planning the next day’s routes, that is time that could be spent with family.
When you let RouteSavvy optimize your routes, it typically cuts about ¾ of the time spent on manually planning routes.
Potential Cost Savings of RouteSavvy: RouteSavvy customers routinely say they’re saving an average of 2 hours per week; 8 hours per month; and a whopping 96 hours per year.
This means the amount of time being wasted on manual route planning is as high as 96 hours per year. That’s 2 ½ weeks of lost time savings for an owner or manager.
Here’s the big question for business owners & managers: What would YOU do with 96 hours per year of saved time?
Hidden Costs Of Manual Route Planning – LOST OPERATIONAL COST SAVINGS
When business & non-profit owners and managers manually plan routes, they are planning routes that are not as efficient as what a route optimization software tool like RouteSavvy can do. As a result, the business or non-profit fleet is still driving more miles than what would be driven if they had used affordable route optimization software.
Let’s think conservatively and assume that manual route planning results in your fleet driving 500 miles per month that could have been avoided. The loss of those savings over the course of year really start to add up.
Let’s first start with the biggest operational cost of a fleet: fuel costs. Even when gas is cheap, you’re still spending money you shouldn’t have to spend when you don’t FULLY optimize routes.
Let’s also assume that gas is $1.79 gallon.
An average 12-foot truck gets 10 miles per gallon for easy math.
When you drive 500 miles per month that could have been eliminated, that’s costing a minimum of $89.50 per month, and $1,074.00 per year.
Hidden Costs Of Manual Route Planning – LOST EXTRA BUSINESS REVENUE
When a route planning software tool like RouteSavvy reduces miles driven to get the same job done, it means that managers can shoe-horn extra service calls, deliveries, or pick-ups in the course of a week, month, and year. That extra revenue can really add up & help a business’s bottom line in good times and bad.
Let’s assume the fully optimizing your routes means you can shoe-horn in just 1 extra service call per week.
Let’s assume that the average service call is 2 hours @ $180.
Four extra service calls per month = $720.00 per month, and a whopping $8,640 per year in extra revenue.
If you manually optimize routes and you’re driving 500 miles more than you should, the extra revenue generated from one extra call per week would simply not manifest. And indeed, that would qualify as lost revenue
A Tally of the Hidden Costs of Manual Routing Over A Year
Numbers don’t lie. Here’s a look at how much manual routing really costs:
- Lost Manager Time from Manual Routing = Up to 96 hours per year
- Lost Fuel Cost Savings From Manual Routing = $1,074.00 year
- Lost Revenue From Manual Routing (Shoe-horning 1 Extra Service Call Per Week) = $8,640 per year
When you consider that RouteSavvy costs just $300 per year, and it can generate such significant savings in time and money, it is mind-boggling that there are still businesses and non-profits manually planning routes for their fleet. The hypothetical savings listed above total close to $10,000 per year. The savings in time is equal to a 2+ week vacation!
These top 3 hidden costs of manual routing make it a no-brainer to use route optimization software. What’s more, OnTerra Systems, the developers of RouteSavvy, have a special offer to help businesses during the pandemic.
Want to learn how to save your business with RouteSavvy route optimization software? Sign up for our Free, 14-day trial and you’ll get the full functionality of RouteSavvy FREE through June 30, 2020. Once you sign up for the free 14-day trial, we’ll be in touch to activate full functionality of this powerful routing software tool free through June 30, 2020, and we’ll also schedule a free, one-on-one tutorial to learn how to use RouteSavvy FAST. Sign up now!
