Longo's Deploys On-Demand Fleet Management Service

WATERLOO, Ontario -- Longo Brothers Fruit Markets, a 14-store Canadian independent based here, plans to improve delivery productivity and customer service by deploying a suite of services for its transportation, logistics, manufacturing, retail and distribution enterprises

Longo's deployed Descartes' On-Demand Fleet Management Service as part of a strategic initiative to provide the best food experience for every customer, every time. Descartes helps Longo's meet this commitment by providing an end-to-end delivery management solution that combines route planning, dispatch, automated vehicle location and wireless communications to create reliable, customer-centric delivery routes that focus on reducing overall distribution costs.

"We realized that our delivery operations were not running as efficiently as possible and decided to take the Descartes Challenge and bring in the delivery management expertise they offered," said Longo's director of alternate channels, Joe Fusco. "Descartes simply builds better routes. With Descartes, we are able provide better service to our customers while reducing costs and streamlining our operations. We could not get the same results by bringing routing functions in-house at this time."

Longo's sends daily order information to Descartes, which routes deliveries based upon customer requirements and Longo's business resource constraints. Optimized route plans are then generated and provided to Longo's through a browser-based user interface. Longo's personnel can view delivery routes, receive real-time status updates from the field, and run reports directly from their Web browsers. The solution's role-based access control gives Longo's dispatchers, customer service representatives, and operations management visibility to information and access to functionality specific to their jobs.

Using the Fleet Management Service, Longo's was able to increase the number of stops-per-route, reduce labor hours, and reduce total distance driven to achieve greater than 10 percent improvement in delivery efficiency, according to Descartes. In addition, the retailer has achieved almost 100 percent on-time delivery. The wireless capabilities offered by Descartes' MobileLink solution allows Longo's to track drivers en-route, and enables proactive communication to customers about order status and arrival time.