The US-based company uses 15 different carriers with 50 dispatch locations and needed to be able to share information quickly and more efficiently with all parties.
Descartes’ on-demand fleet management and tracking system is designed to plan, optimise, dispatch, track and monitor delivery fleets in real-time via the web.
The service also provides dispatchers, managers and customer service personnel with a real-time, global view of driver movement and delivery status across the entire operation and is available on a pay-as-you-go basis to eliminate up front costs.
“A lot of people say SaaS is not beneficial for bigger companies, but that’s not always the case,” explains Chris Jones, EVP solutions and systems at Descartes.
Orders are now taken in-store at The Home Depot and are inputted into the system before being shared electronically among all relevant parties, removing the need for time consuming fax forms, and improving the order detail to dispatch process.
The retailer has also benefitted from a systematic, uniform approach to order management and route optimisation, corporate controlled pricing parameters and systemgenerated manifests and weekly bills.
As well as automating the order to delivery process, part of the focus was on improving customer experience. The Home Depot is now able to see if deliveries are on time and if customers
are happy with the service as delivery visibility has been increased through access to real-time delivery status and on-demand historical information. Previously it was unable to do this.
The system was rolled out in four months and is now used by 5,000 people on a daily basis.
Jones says one of the key reasons the roll-out was so successful was down to proper training. “The Home Depot got it exactly right. They put a lot of effort into training and documentation which enabled the system to run smoothly from the beginning. And we focused on making sure it was understandable in terms of how to use it.” Uptime is now close to 100 per cent.
