Transforming last-mile logistics

Struggling under the weight of accelerating order volumes, furniture retailer Raymour & Flanigan needed a high-tech solution to the delivery challenges brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic—challenges that included finding drivers, maintaining on-time performance, and meeting increasingly high customer demands. 

Business as usual simply wouldn’t do in this new pandemic-driven reality.

“[Their system] was typically a highly manual operation,” explains Guy Bloch, CEO of the fulfillment and delivery cloud platform provider Bringg, which partnered with Raymour & Flanigan to solve the problem. “Traditionally, this meant planning all routes in advance, scheduling deliveries and service appointments by phone, reminding customers and rescheduling based on customer requests by phone call, and maintaining a good deal of paperwork.”

With Bringg’s technology platform, Raymour & Flanigan was able to digitize those operations, improving performance metrics and customer satisfaction in one fell swoop.

GOING DIGITAL

Raymour & Flanigan is one of the largest furniture and mattress dealers in the Northeast. Demand for product delivery soared in 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic kept consumers close to home and drove online shopping for home-improvement products, furnishings, and related products and services. Leveraging Bringg’s last-mile technology solution would help the retailer scale operations to keep up with the burgeoning demand, while also adapting to shifts in shopping patterns that were likely to stick around well after the pandemic subsided. 

The companies took a phased approach to implementing Bringg’s technology, which connects a retailer’s supply chain systems with internal and third-party fleets on a single platform. The manual route planning, scheduling, and adjusting would all be brought online, powered by artificial intelligence (AI)-based algorithms that not only speed up processes but also provide data-driven insights for better decision-making.

The system was up and running within months, according to Bloch.

“Making the digital jump involves implementing and integrating new systems, processes, and training. We took a phased approach, first deploying and optimizing one technology, and then the next, to minimize operational disruption and ensure optimal adoption and impact,” he explains. “For example, driver app adoption enables a host of capabilities. As driver app adoption began showing impact, we moved on to the routing automation [stage]. Subsequent phases included digital customer notifications, digital self-service customer scheduling, and real-time branded customer tracking.”

Bringg’s technology was integrated with Raymour & Flanigan’s legacy systems, creating a seamless end-to-end solution. 

REALIZING IMPROVEMENTS

Measurable benefits came quickly but were most notable when the retailer began using Bringg’s automated routing capabilities to streamline deliveries. 

“The impact in stops per truck was significant, and further improvements have continued to drive this efficiency,” Bloch explains.

Since implementing the platform, Raymour & Flanigan has increased delivery volumes by 40%, seen a 36% increase in deliveries per truck, and reduced late deliveries by 56%. And company leaders say customer satisfaction levels have risen to 90%.

“Bringg’s technology drove our logistics digital transformation, increasing performance and innovation that exceeded our efficiency, scalability, and customer service objectives,” Bryan Anastasi, Raymour & Flanigan’s vice president of customer care and business solutions, said in a statement describing the implementation. “Their speed and flexibility will continue to drive our performance and innovation for years to come.”

Since the initial tech implementation, Raymour & Flanigan has migrated its on-site service teams to the Bringg platform. This includes giving service technicians access to the driver app, the routing and customer-notification capabilities, and the platform’s automated appointment scheduling features.

“This is a great example of how the platform molds itself to each use case’s requirements, optimizing toward each customer’s objectives,” Bloch adds.