Order Priority: What You Don't Get with Google Maps Route Optimization

Updated on March 21, 2022 by Yulia Miashkova

On this blog, we talk a lot about route planning and optimization because these are key parts of any delivery workflow.

The math is simple. Efficient routes = low costs and happy customers.

How do you get efficient routes? By using routing and route optimization software that considers every little detail (related to the order, location, driver, service time, etc.) and restrictions.

The good news about using a dedicated route optimization tool and not just Google Maps is that you can be flexible.

For example, it makes sense to build and optimize routes ahead of time to get the cheapest, most efficient setup.

Meanwhile, route optimization tools like Track-POD let you squeeze in last-minute orders and offer on-demand or same-day delivery without sacrificing efficiency.

In this blog post, we take a close look at Track-POD's Priority feature.

What is priority in route optimization?

Even though Google Maps allows you to rearrange stops in a route, it doesn't let you assign priority to drop locations, not to mention customers.

Priority in route optimization means you can assign greater/smaller importance to specific orders, customers, or addresses.

By doing so, you tell your route optimization software to take priority into account when building delivery routes.

Track-POD offers priority as part of its route optimization workflow. Because it's is a time-sensitive setting, you need to make sure you've chosen Time as your optimization strategy and enabled priority in Routing and Optimization settings.

3 use cases of using Priority in route optimization

Let's look at the use cases of the Priority setting in Track-POD.

1. On-demand delivery

On-demand delivery and same-day delivery are both customers' favorites.

One requires an order to be processed immediately after it's been placed (on-demand), the other leaves a larger window for order processing and routing but still calls for a speedy and automated workflow (same-day).

By indicating order priority as High, you can add last-minute delivery or collection jobs to your daily routes.

Note: When you add a last-minute order with High priority all existing priority settings (addresses and customers) are overwritten.

2. Priority customers

If you have regular customers for B2B deliveries or otherwise, you can use Track-POD's Priority feature to assign importance to each of them.

To do this, you'll need to specify priority when adding customers via the clients directory in Track-POD settings.

Having the option to specify priority clients means you can fine-tune your distribution logistics or a recurring delivery workflow.

Learn how Prep to Your Door delivers weekly zero-waste meals with Track-POD

3. Priority addresses

Similar to customers, you can specify different priorities for client addresses via the dedicated directory in Track-POD.

This way, whenever you need to deliver or collect from a high-priority address, our optimization algorithm will build a route in a way that serves the top-priority clients first.

Recap

There are many ways to make the most of your vehicle and driver resources with Track-POD. Our routing and optimization algorithm will consider all order details and restrictions you specify.

Order, customer, and address priority is one of the ways to help Track-POD do the best job for you.

Book a free demo to find out more about the tools and features that will boost your performance and help you provide a delightful delivery experience to your customers. You can also test-drive Track-POD for 7 days for free.