C A S E S T U D Y:

GROCERY GATEWAY

RETAIL

VISIBILITY & ROUTING

NORTH AMERICA

H E L P I N G C U S T O M E R S DELIVER

TM

GATEWAY TO SUCCESS:
DELIVERING CUSTOMER SATIFACTION IN THE LAST MILE
Grocery Gateway, a company operated by Longo Brothers Fruit Market Inc., is Canadas leader in online sales of home-delivered groceries. The company offers more than 7,500 grocery items on its website, including fresh meats, produce and organic products. Grocery Gateways dedicated fleet of delivery vehicles make close to 500 stops per day to meet the needs of 15,000 active customers. Customer orders are assigned specific 90-minute delivery windows much narrower than the broad morning or afternoon delivery windows offered by most other retail delivery operations. To ensure all orders are consistently delivered on time, Grocery Gateway needed a way to plan and optimize its routes to maximize operational efficiencies. The company also required real-time visibility into its delivery activities on the road, including insight into any exceptions. Our tight delivery windows and the large, densely populated delivery area we serve make our logistics planning and tracking an incredible challenge, said Kurt Mann, Manager of Operations for Grocery Gateway. Our support team needs to be able to look at a routing session in the morning and make adjustments to the plan, based on their real-life knowledge. We also need the flexibility to accommodate customers that call at the last minute to cancel. Grocery Gateways existing logistics software application lacked flexibility and didnt provide the real-time visibility that the company needed.

We can put an immediate plan in place to ensure we meet our promise of on-time delivery...
Stephen Tallevi, General Manager, Grocery Gateway

G R O CERY G AT E WAY GOAL: Canadas largest online grocer, needed a way to plan and optimize its routes as well as achieve real-time visibility into its delivery
operations to ensure it was meeting its 90-minute delivery window.

SOLUTION: With Descartes Visibility and Routing Solution, Customer Response is able to track drivers throughout the day and adjust their
routes accordingly. The dedicated routing consultant assigned to Grocery Gateway, as part of the Routing Service, ensures that dynamic delivery routes are optimized based on the best route plan possible by taking into account geographic zones, time windows and other physical constraints.

BENEFITS: 14% improvement in on-time deliveries; exceeding stops per paid hour target by 12.4%; routes are continually optimized for
maximum efficiency; intensive I.T. support is no longer required to help manage delivery operations; access to historical data ensures that budget is accurate and operations are optimized; customer Response is more proactive in servicing customer needs.

Logistics Software as a Service Brings Flexibility and Ease-of-Use to Grocery Gateway

Descartes provides Grocery Gateway with a combination of sophisticated routing, tracking, planning and dispatching functionality. The company also provides a dedicated routing consultant to Grocery Gateway as part of the outsourced Routing Service the company subscribes to. The consultant is responsible for optimizing the online grocers static and dynamic routes each day by taking into account geographic zones, time windows and other physical constraints. The Descartes implementation was completed over a five-week period. The solution is very user-friendly, which means we dont have to spend a lot of time training our drivers and Customer Response teams. Their reports also provide the specific views and insights we need to continually improve our operations. Selecting Descartes Visibility and Routing Solution was an easy decision: as a hosted offering, Descartes eliminates the complexity of installed software, and allows for configuration to meet Grocery Gateways specific needs. Unlike most logistics applications, Descartes embraces a software as a service model the technology is hosted, maintained and managed by Descartes and we dont have to purchase hardware or handle any extra installation, maintenance, or upgrades, said Mann. Our in-house technology team is free to focus on our core infrastructure, which is a tremendous saving.

because he is running ahead of schedule. We can put an immediate plan in place to ensure we meet our promise of ontime delivery, said Mann. Since the Descartes deployment, Grocery Gateway has improved its on time delivery performance by 14% and also exceeded its stops per paid hour target by 12.4%. The positive impact delivered by Descartes is felt right across the organization. Customer Response is more comfortable because they have moved from a reactive to a proactive role; and drivers like the drive time consistency that the route optimizer delivers. According to Stephen Tallevi, Grocery Gateway General Manager, Our drivers tell us that they like knowing where they stand and that they can ask for help, and the solution lets them know theyre part of a network. They know that if theyre behind schedule, the company is aware of the situation and is putting a plan in place. With statistics from Descartes reports, Grocery Gateway is also able to provide feedback during regular driver meetings, including highlighting high-performing individuals. Descartes enables Grocery Gateway to adjust its parameters to improve metrics. We know that delivery to a business is different than a house, so we can customize the delivery windows accordingly. We are no longer working to an average, but rather servicing both customer types more effectively, explains Mann. Gaining access to historical delivery data has also had a significant bottom-line impact on Grocery Gateways planning and budgeting processes. According to Tallevi, Before Descartes everything was a good estimate, but with real data, we now have more specific figures to ensure that our budget is accurate and we can continually improve our operations.

Achieving Bottom-line Results Across the Business

With real-time visibility into delivery activities on the road, Customer Response is able to track drivers throughout the day and adjust their routes accordingly. Using GPS-enabled mobile phones, Descartes initiates visibility the moment a Grocery Gateway driver departs for the first stop. This automatically updates the planned route and all its associated metrics. Drivers simply push two buttons on the phone on completion of deliveries to report back to head office. GPS pings are also sent from the phone, automatically updating the location, speed, and direction on maps that can be accessed anywhere through a standard web browser. We can see in real time if Driver A for example, has had a slowdown because of traffic delays, and then deploy Driver B
T H E D E S C A R T E S D I F F E R E N C E

The Gateway to Growth

Grocery Gateway and Descartes are working together to support Grocery Gateways planned expansion across Ontario by incorporating additional, custom configured features into the solution. At the end of the day, Descartes benefits our business and positively impacts our customer service. We get improved operational metrics, so we save money, and we can guarantee on-time delivery, which makes the consumer happy, said Tallevi.

0 7 MAY- C S -WAY

The Descartes Systems Group Inc. (TSX: DSG) (NASDAQ: DSGX), a leading provider of software-as-a-service logistics solutions, is delivering results across the globe today for organizations that operate logistics intensive businesses. Descartes logistics management solutions provide messaging services between logistics trading partners, book-to-bill services of contract carriers and private fleet management services for organizations of all sizes. These solutions and services help Descartes customers reduce administrative costs, billing cycles, fleet size, contract carrier costs, and mileage driven and improve pick up and delivery reliability. For more information, visit www.descartes.com. Copyright Descartes. All rights reserved. Descartes, the Descartes triangle logo and all product names used are Descartes trademarks unless specifically identified as the trademarks of a third party.
Copyright 2007, The Descartes Systems Group Inc.

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