AI IS BUILT INTO

OUR SOFTWARE AND IS USED TO FORECAST THE NUMBER OF DELIVERIES

FOR OUR SMALL AND MEDIUM MERCHANTS . been able to drive towards a more efficient and sustainable delivery alternative .

We wanted to use technology to provide a solution to polluting deliveries that arrive late , or at times not at all . We had to innovate and got to work building our in-house routing platform that powers all of our deliveries , known today as Pathfinder .

Cracking the routing conundrum

Routing has long been a formidable challenge . Often couriers opt to provide their drivers with a list of addresses for them to figure out the route themselves . While some drivers may have incredible local knowledge ( akin to a London black cabbie ), it can be difficult to consider outside factors like roadworks or busy traffic and makes it difficult for customers to change the delivery address or time .

It ’ s understandable why some couriers do it this way – routing is infinitely complex . If two vans make deliveries to 20 stops , the number of potential routes is 2.5 quintillion – a number so big it has 17 zeros in it ! However , technology can empower couriers to navigate all of these possibilities in mere seconds and put drivers on the route that ’ s the most efficient and sustainable , updating in realtime if , for example , a customer changes their delivery address .

We built Pathfinder with these applications in mind , and the platform is based on the latest research on vehicle routing , mapping and AI . AI is built into our software and is used to forecast the number of deliveries for our small and medium merchants . We ’ re also able to review historical data and consider seasonality and estimates to accurately predict the number of parcels due to be delivered well in advance .

Incremental gains

Putting technology first also comes with a lot of long-term benefits . Over the past three years , we ’ ve gathered a large bank of data on specific locations across London .

When drivers visit a location , they ’ re able to note down the best places to park or how to access a building and can flag if the address we have on file is incorrect . This is then fed into Pathfinder and is used to improve future

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