Fleetowner 6277 022316 Sears Descartes 1
Fleetowner 6277 022316 Sears Descartes 1
Fleetowner 6277 022316 Sears Descartes 1
Fleetowner 6277 022316 Sears Descartes 1
Fleetowner 6277 022316 Sears Descartes 1

Fleets Online: Delivery “pain points”

April 7, 2016
Sears Holdings stores and brands enjoy quite an established presence in the U.S., but the company found its routing and delivery system was outdated. After exploring customers' "pain points," Sears replaced the old system with the Route Planner and MobileLink products from Descartes.

Company: Sears Holdings Corp., Hoffman Estates, IL

Operation: One of the largest national retailers with more than 1,700 Sears, Kmart and subsidiary stores across the country; owns and markets a number of brands of clothing, home goods, automotive parts and supplies, and other products

PROBLEM

Sears Holdings stores and brands enjoy quite an established presence dating back decades in the U.S., but the company found its routing and delivery system was outdated. It was a legacy system developed in-house that lacked some key functionality needed to home in on home delivery improvements. 

The system didn’t allow for map updates and also required routes to be planned and inputted as a “batch job.” Dispatch and planning personnel would take each day’s orders and develop corresponding delivery routes that had to be locked in every evening.

The company also needed a better way to manage and track capacity and availability across its fleet, including accurate information on truck locations and the ability to adjust routes as necessary.

SOLUTION

Sears’ legacy routing system may not have allowed the fleet visibility and planning flexibility needed to keep pace with the most competitive retail networks today, but the company also considered what had to improve from another angle: the customer’s.

“We actually conducted a focus group with our members to understand their pain points,” says Kris Eyunni, vice president of supply chain for home delivery and distribution at Sears Holdings. That effort identified a common complaint.

“When you ask a member what the biggest pain point is when it comes to final-mile delivery, the answer is often the same,” Eyunni notes. “‘Where is my delivery driver?’”

The company deployed the Route Planner and MobileLink mobile workforce management products from fleet technology provider Descartes. The routing software is designed to enhance fleet capacity utilization, improve on-time performance, and allow flexibility in planning for things like order changes and cancellations or rerouting for same-day delivery, according to Descartes. 

Bill Hutchinson, senior vice president of supply chain at Sears Holdings, notes that it took about six months to deploy the technology at 106 delivery hubs. “We chose Descartes at Sears because of the need for our customers to have very accurate promises as to when they get their deliveries and our need to drive efficiency in our network,” he says.

The cloud-based routing software allows Sears to chart and make on-the-fly adjustments to tweak routes and get more precise delivery information to clients—a big part of addressing customers’ pain points, especially given the nature of many items being delivered.

“Because we’re working with a live, real-time system, we’re actually able to make adjustments and see those reflected in the routes right away,” contends Christina Gross, manager of Sears’ Sacramento routing office. “We can adjust for circumstances like weather, change dock departs, follow those responses, and have the routes update immediately,” she adds.

The Descartes product also has increased fleet efficiency. “It allows us to manage our capacity in each [truck] a lot better and a lot more precisely,” according to Joe Marco, director of logistics and planning at Sears.

About the Author

Aaron Marsh

Before computerization had fully taken hold and automotive work took someone who speaks engine, Aaron grew up in Upstate New York taking cars apart and fixing and rewiring them, keeping more than a few great jalopies (classics) on the road that probably didn't deserve to be. He spent a decade inside the Beltway covering Congress and the intricacies of the health care system before a stint in local New England news, picking up awards for both pen and camera.

He's written about you-name-it, from transportation and law and the courts to events of all kinds and telecommunications, and landed in trucking when he joined Fleet Owner in July 2015. Long an editorial leader, he's a keeper of knowledge at Fleet Owner ready to dive in on the technical and the topical inside and all around trucking—and still turns a wrench or two. Or three. 

And he's never without a camera, or so rumor has it.

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