GSG currently makes over 1,000 flower deliveries a day in and around London. The company now imports all jobs into Route Monkey’s route optimisation and scheduling software. The Route Monkey software then calculates the next day’s deliveries using the least number of vans and lowest cumulative mileage, and produces an individual daily manifest for each driver.
Commenting on the new system, Rob Berringer, managing director of GSG, said: “Previously, we used a combination of Microsoft MapPoint and local knowledge to plan deliveries. Route Monkey from day one demonstrated a 20% saving in mileage, which is a dramatic difference.
“In highly congested metropolitan areas like London, routing and scheduling can have a huge impact on productivity, compared to manual planning or relying on drivers’ local knowledge.
“The ability to very quickly and easily amend the algorithms is also a real plus point. For example, we can alter the allotted amount of time per delivery, depending on the type of flowers or even the weather. This flexibility enables us to deliver the very best possible level of service to our clients.”
Global Service Group (GSG) provides a wide range of distribution services across the UK, operating a fleet of more than 450 light commercial vehicles. It operates across both the public and private sectors, with customers including the NHS and local authorities, as well as laboratory testing companies, financial institutions, retail, food distribution, passenger transport and transport businesses.
Specialising in contracts which require high levels of security, a proven chain of custody, a temperature controlled environment, or more general logistics solutions, it delivers distribution services to some of the UK’s best known organisations in both the public and private sector.
Following its success with urban flower delivery, GSG has rolled out Route Monkey to a complex NHS contract. This involves collecting clinical samples from over 400 donor sites in Essex, within tightly specified time frames.
“Our customers rely on our ability to solve their problems,” added Berringer. “Route Monkey enables us to provide the most effective and value for money solutions.”