What software's are sole traders using for managing deliveries to customers? entrepreneur how earn by blogging blog

Hey all!

So allow me to give a slight bit of background to this little potential brain wave that I had, and am looking into seeing is it worth pursuing further.

I am a student, working full time in a garden centre to help pay my way (It's a lot cheaper over here in the UK).

I have pretty good customer relations, so I am usually left plonked at the counter - interacting and being the person that all the elderly customers come in and talk to ( I really don't mind, it helps the day fly by).

So a thing, coming up to Christmas now, is the delivery of Christmas trees - as bizarre as that sounds I know.

Their is usually 2 guys out on deliveries the whole time, one driver and the other helps with assisting the driver remove all the goods and transport them into the house.

Simple stuff really.

The typical "lifter" was sick for the last couple days, and being the only other guy working there I have been reassigned as the assister in these trips.

And my god I was HORRIFIED at how unprepared they were.

So for starters, EVERYTHING is recorded on paper.

Which I didn't understand at all. There is a big pad of these printed sheets, with certain boxes on them, so as the cashier who is putting through the sale can fill it out if the customer specifies they want it to be delivered to them.

There is a hell of a lot of:

• spelling mistakes

• numbers written down wrong

• addresses misspelled/ not taken down correctly

• No time specified on some dockets

From a few of those mistakes alone yesterday and today it cost us a solid few hours, and a few shouting matches between the 2 of us (built up stress on the drivers part).

So before we left today we had to do the typical thing of attempting to call all of the customers before-hand to ensure they were there.

No point driving 25 minutes to deliver a good and to see that they are not there.

More than 80% of the customers did not have their phones on and did not answer the calls - which of course lead to more stress on the side of the driver.

So it got me thinking basically - why the hell is this still an issue and why are the garden center not using a software to arrange all of their deliveries for them / does it even exist?

After looking into a bit, I have found that there are "Systems" to help with deliveries but it goes the whole way down to having additional hardware that the customer signs off when they recieve goods.

I would not be looking for anything that complex.

Essentially I am looking at starting to develop:

A system in which, customers delivery information are input through a computer / additional hardware piece (tablet etc) at the cash register - and on the day of the delivery the driver of the van obtains a simple / easy to read map of exactly what they have to bring to where - on their phone, and the night before the delivery - the customer is sent a text / email to remind them about the delivery and on the morning of the delivery also.

Is there anything like that out there at the moment? Or would I be best off trying to code something like it myself?

submitted by /u/Figrole
[link] [comments]

from Entrepreneur http://ift.tt/2Anlu4k
via IFTTT
add adsense to blogger

how much money do bloggers make? can blogs make money? make money off ads how to get money from blogging? best websites to make money blog adsense income earn from blogging website ideas to make money how websites make money?