Shuffling tickets at eight in the morning
The driver arrives at eight. On the counter are today's delivery tickets: website orders printed overnight, phone orders from yesterday, relay orders, a funeral that must be at the chapel by 10:30, a hospital delivery, a birthday surprise that must arrive after 2pm, and a business that closes at 4pm.
You and the driver sort the tickets into piles by area. Someone checks the funeral time and puts it on top. The piles become runs, and the driver writes the order on the back of a ticket. It takes most of an hour. Then a late order arrives for an address the driver passed twenty minutes ago.
On a peak day with two or three drivers, it takes longer, and the runs are less efficient because there is no time to think.
Why route planning takes so long
Florist deliveries have constraints that a simple map does not handle: fixed-time funerals, timed slots, businesses with opening hours, hospitals with delivery rules, and recipients who must not receive their surprise before a certain time.
Order details come from several channels and are often on paper by the time routes are planned, so plotting them on a map means typing addresses in again.
And the driver's local knowledge is valuable but not written down. When your usual driver is off, the replacement takes much longer.
What manual routes cost
| Problem | Effect |
|---|---|
| An hour spent sorting tickets | Drivers leave later than they could |
| Timed deliveries missed | Funerals and surprises delivered at the wrong moment |
| Late orders added badly | Extra miles and back-tracking |
| Knowledge in one driver's head | Slow runs when they are off |
| No record of the route | Hard to answer 'when will it arrive?' |
Fuel and driver time are real costs for a florist. So is the recipient who was out because the delivery came at the wrong time.
Peak days make every weakness bigger. On Valentine's Day or the Friday before Mother's Day, you may have temporary drivers who do not know the area, far more stops than usual and customers ringing to ask where their order is. Planning by ticket piles simply does not scale to that, however experienced the person doing it.
Hospitals and care homes have their own rules, too. Some no longer accept flowers on certain wards, some only take deliveries at the main reception during set hours, and some want a named contact. Drivers learn these by experience, but when the knowledge is not written down, each new driver learns them the hard way, often with a bouquet brought back to the shop.
How we plan the runs
- The day's deliveries come from your order list, whatever channel they came from, with addresses, time windows and delivery notes.
- Fixed times (funerals, timed slots, business hours, 'after 2pm' surprises) are set as constraints on each delivery.
- A route is built using a mapping service such as Google Maps, split across your drivers and vans, with fixed-time deliveries in the right place in each run.
- Each driver receives their run on their phone, in order, with navigation, recipient phone numbers and delivery notes.
- Late orders can be inserted into an active run at the best point, and the driver's phone updates.
- The counter can see each driver's progress, so the answer to 'when will it arrive?' is based on where the driver actually is.
Your driver's knowledge still matters. They can reorder stops, and recurring notes such as 'use side door' or 'hospital reception closes at 8pm' are saved for next time.
Out of the door on time
At eight, the runs are ready. The driver loads the van in route order and leaves. The funeral is in the right place in the run. A late order is added to the afternoon run without a phone call.
- Routes built from the order list in minutes
- Timed and funeral deliveries respected
- Runs on drivers' phones with navigation and notes
- Live progress visible to the counter
Signs route planning is eating your mornings
- Delivery runs are planned by sorting paper tickets.
- Drivers leave later than you would like.
- Timed deliveries are sometimes missed.
- Late orders mean extra trips.
- Runs are much slower when your usual driver is off.