RouteQ, a provider of cloud-based, AI-driven route planning solutions, has announced its participation in Seamless Middle East 2022, the regional e-commerce industry’s premier trade event, which will take place on May 31 and June 1 at the Dubai World Trade Center.
The participation follows RouteQ’s February announcement of the opening of its Dubai operations in preparation for Middle East expansion — a move made to fill critical gaps in the region’s delivery-fleet operations.
“Seamless 2022 is the ideal venue to broach the many issues facing delivery-focused businesses across the region,” said Vladimir Nesterov, General Manager for RouteQ in the Middle East. “At a time when many supply chains have been broken or modified, the pressure is on retailers, e-grocers, and logistics companies to improve metrics around last mile delivery — the most expensive part of the delivery process. Last-mile delivery can account for as much as 25% of an order’s total cost. But unlike the first mile, it can be significantly optimized with help from technology.”
When last-mile delivery logistics are not thoroughly organized, they can be very fragile. Factors such as incorrect addresses, traffic congestion, a lack of parking, and ineffective communication with the courier can all have a negative impact on the delivery process. RouteQ manages over 300 of these parameters with special tags that describe the conditions for vehicle routing, such as the presence of equipment in the vehicle for a specific parcel, as well as complex work and rest schedules for couriers. These special tags also overlay with the most accurate traffic forecast to increase efficiency even further.
These characteristics have enabled the company to establish a track record for improving per-unit economics — with RouteQ’s assistance, 20 percent more orders can be delivered with the same size fleet (or even a smaller fleet), and up to 98 percent of deliveries arrive on time. The company’s support for sustainable delivery-fleet management has made it a draw for logistics operations all over the world, with Coca-Cola HBC, Unilever, istegelsin, and IKEA among its customers.
“RouteQ’s success lies in our focus on technology excellence,” Nesterov explained. “Our founding team honed their talents at giants like DHL and Maersk. They quickly came to see the potential of AI to forecast traffic congestion for urban deliveries at a time when home-based shopping was on the rise. Today we have teams working in six countries.”
RouteQ will demonstrate solutions from its last-mile optimization SaaS platform at Seamless Middle East 2022. Its automatic route-planning system optimizes routes for customers based on historical traffic data and precise arrival-time predictions, taking into account factors such as freight dimensions, transport capacity, acceptable delivery-time margins, and the need for driver rest periods.
On Day One of Seamless Middle East 2022, RouteQ will host a panel discussion on the rise of hybrid-delivery models, which companies use to effectively meet transportation and human resource demands by combining outsourced and in-house delivery capacity. The session will discuss how to choose between in-house, outsourced, and hybrid models, as well as the quandary of in-house versus outsourced fleets in terms of maintaining a balance with delivery-management technologies. The discussion will also cover which metrics can be used to identify flaws in delivery models. C-level executives from retail, e-commerce, and logistics will speak at the session, including Dharmin Ved, CEO of 6th Street, and Vladimir Nesterov, GM for Middle East at RouteQ.
“Seamless is the ideal platform for discussing a range of issues affecting the e-commerce arena, and at RouteQ, we believe we have an integral role to play in supporting organizations as they overcome these challenges. We are here to show how any business can keep the promises it makes to its customers, and deliver on time, every time,” concluded Nesterov.
Visitors to Seamless 2022 can find RouteQ located in Sheikh Saeed Hall 1, Stand H54