The pharmaceutical industry is an unsung hero which rarely anyone talks about. Over the years, this industry has granted us with numerous life-saving drugs by conducting clinical trials and advanced research. These life-saving drugs have saved more than tens of millions of lives over the years.
Logistics and transportation are one of the most important components in the pharmaceutical industry. It won’t be wrong to say that these components have ensured the success of pharma goods and products across the globe.
It also won’t be wrong to say that even a small mistake in the logistics can have huge repercussions in terms of costs, operations, and overall efficiency.
Talking about costs, as per WHO and PDA a pharmaceutical organization on an average spends 6% of their total revenue on logistics
If we talk more specifically, then last mile delivery is the most important leg in the transportation of Pharma supplies. A company that manages on-demand medicine home delivery or last-mile drug deliveries has to face a number of challenges such as:
- Truck capacity constraints
- Shortage of specialized drivers
- Non-refrigerated pharma supplies
- Cold-chain pharma products
- Lower visibility in logistics
- Variations in temperature
- Traffic constraints
- Special storage requirements
- Difficulty in fulfilling the sudden rise of on-demand deliveries
- Emergency security measures
- Pharma goods that require refrigeration
- Distribution safety guidelines for various geographies
All the above challenges can be combated by a robust route optimization solution that delivers pharma goods to the right customers at the right time. Route optimization solution is an effective tool to enhance the overall efficiency and the productivity of your pharma supply chain. Let’s discuss in detail as to how it optimizes the last-mile delivery of your pharmaceutical company
Flexible delivery schedules
Flexibility is one aspect that the customers will appreciate, no matter what business it is and pharmacy delivery business is no exception. Offering highly flexible delivery schedules can result in higher customer satisfaction as customers buy medicines for both emergency use as well as future use.
One of the key reasons for lack of flexibility in many pharmacy delivery businesses is the use of traditional methods of route planning and optimization.
Flexibility plays a major role in the pharmacy. Let’s understand with an example. Suppose you have to deliver some medicines and equipment in a nursing home at flexible time windows. In such deliveries, even a minor delay can have huge repercussions.
Moreover, it can create doubts and lack of trust among your customers which is never good for any business. That’s the reason why it’s most important to have robust pharmacy delivery software that can optimize all the routes with its route optimization feature. But how?
Route optimization makes your last mile delivery operations streamlined, flexible, and fast. It helps you to deliver pharma supplies at your customer’s convenience by planning delivery schedules automatically. Moreover, it also ensures that you cover a maximum number of stops by covering the minimum possible distance. This approach makes your last mile delivery quick and cost-efficient.
Achieve end-to-end visibility
Visibility is important for pharmaceutical companies as well as for pharmaceutical 3PL operators. Pharma logistics involves massive costs that come from storage, refrigerated trucks, temperature control measures, and many more. That’s the reason why pharmacy companies must leverage technology to reduce costs and to achieve end-to-end visibility.
End-to-end visibility powered by cutting-edge technology is a must-have for all pharmaceutical companies. It’s because the last mile delivery agents in pharmacy logistics have to deal with temperature-sensitive medicines. Even a minor delay can render those pharmacy supplies discarded.
With the route optimization software of online medicine delivery, you can achieve real-time visibility of your vehicles’ location. Moreover, you can receive vital insights on trucks such as idling period, active period, number of breaks, and many more. With greater visibility, you can have greater control over your fleet of vehicles and overall operations.
Eliminate unnecessary wasteful transportation costs caused
due to last-mile storage
The last-mile delivery agents play a huge responsibility in pharma transportation. They are required to follow the Good Distribution Practice (GDP) guidelines for the delivery of pharma supplies.
As discussed earlier, the pharma transportation costs are huge. Let’s understand why?
Firstly, the storage settings required for refrigerated products are different from those of non-refrigerated products. Moreover, pharma products require additional care, especially in temperature management as compared to some other products like electronics, books, fashion, etc.
To ship or transport pharma products, you would require trucks with controlled room temperature (CRT), thermal blanketing, refrigerant, insulated containers, and temperature monitoring electronics.
All these special requirements increase the cost of pharma transportation. In addition to that, even after all this care, there’s still a chance of damage to the pharma goods. In such cases, you need to analyze the damage. Moreover, the labour cost to identify and analyze the root cause is around $3000 to $10000 which adds up to the overall transportation cost.
With sudden on-demand requests and the responsibility of storage safety regulations, you have to ensure that you take the shortest possible route to travel quickly. Any small delay in the delivery can affect the quality of the pharma goods along with the storage settings.
Route optimization feature of the on-demand medicine delivery solution comes with the cost-efficient and shortest route that helps you to reach your customers in the minimum time possible. With route optimization in place, you can even cope with sudden on-demand delivery requests, as it automatically adjusts the delivery routes ensuring that you deliver all the pharma goods in the minimum time possible.
Fair workload distribution
The workload is a major issue that the pharmaceutical industry faces in logistics. The pharmacy delivery company must recruit those drivers who understand the transport requirements and specific storage well.
There is also a shortage of experienced delivery staff in the pharma industry. This increases the demand and the value of experienced and specialized drivers who can manage the implications that arise during the delivery process.
Due to this high demand and limited supply, there are only a limited number of drivers that are available to complete unlimited pharma delivery requests. Shortage of driver is not the only problem, capacity constraints of the truck also play a major role in determining the workload distribution.
It almost becomes impossible to manage the fleet manually with multiple complexities of varying GDP guidelines, truck capacity, driver shortage, and the large volume of on-demand deliveries. One might think that hiring more drivers would solve the problem, but it would increase the logistics operations cost and the number of inexperienced drivers. The only solution to overcome these hurdles is to leverage technology.
Route optimization comes as a saviour as it automatically assigns all the work. It takes several factors into consideration for assigning tasks like traffic, driver shortage, temperature, truck capacity, risk zone, and many.
Conclusion
The pharmaceutical industry is adding new tools in its inventory along with honing its strengths especially when it comes to the transportation and the distribution. Technology like route optimization has proved to be a boon for the pharmaceutical industry as it helps it to deal with sudden surge delivery demands in the most efficient manner.
Not only this, but it also cuts various costs such as:
- Fuel costs
- Labour costs
- Visibility costs
Apart from that route optimization software also ensures automated task allocation and selection of the most optimized route which is suitable for quick and cost-efficient deliveries of pharma supplies.
If you’re one of the pharmacy companies and are looking for robust last mile delivery software that can guarantee a lightning-quick and cost-efficient last mile delivery then Fixlastmile will end your quest.
Fixlastmile is a robust on-demand pharmacy delivery solution that comes with rich and advanced features. These features solve all the challenges and help you to achieve the following:
- Enhanced productivity
- Higher supply chain visibility
- Rich customer experience
- Timely deliveries
- Satisfied customers
So, what are you waiting for? Get Fixlastmile now and transform your pharmacy delivery business into a new age pharmaceutical success.
