PlaceMakers Transforms Building Supply Distribution in New Zealand with Descartes

Descartes Systems Group, the global leader in uniting logistics-intensive businesses in commerce, announced that PlaceMakers, New Zealand's leading supplier of building materials and hardware, is using the cloud-based Descartes Route Planner™ solution to centralize distribution planning operations across the country. The Bestrane Group, a Descartes 'United by Design' partner in New Zealand, implemented the solution to automate route planning and execution to better serve PlaceMakers' more than 300,000 retail and trade customers.

"We sought to transform our customer delivery experience by moving each of our 63 branches from dispatching and executing deliveries with multiple logistics services providers to centralized logistics planning and our own fleet," explained Wayne Armstrong, Business Transformation Manager at PlaceMakers. "With the Descartes deployment almost complete, we've seen a 40-50% increase in delivery satisfaction and achieved significant financial savings. We've also reduced inbound calls by 16%, increased load utilization by 13% and reduced loading times by 14%. It's a world-class, end-to-end solution that is helping us provide an industry-leading customer experience."

Descartes Route Planner is a cloud-based solution that helps improve operational efficiency and the customer experience through optimized route planning and execution. It supports companies with dynamic delivery environments including same-day delivery by offering flexible, optimal, and reliable time windows and delivery options. With an integrated GPS-based mobile application, the solution has the capability to coordinate drivers, dispatchers and call centers to help ensure that routes are executed according to plan and exceptions are handled efficiently.

"We're pleased to support PlaceMakers' initiative to dramatically improve its customer experience, delivery productivity and agility," said Lee Karlinsky, Senior Vice President, Emerging Markets at Descartes. "Leading companies, like PlaceMakers, are seeing the customer service differentiation, cost savings and improved operational effectiveness that centralized route planning combined with mobile applications for execution can provide."

More Info: http://www.descartes.com