News

Mapping the course to better delivery

October 3, 2005

Not long ago, speeding up pizza delivery was about mashing the accelerator. But for all the right reasons, operators have worked to abandon that practice, refining and quickening in-store performance.

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The advent of computerized POS systems helped that effort tremendously, and years later those machines are still changing how the industry delivers. Now POS systems are making improvements outside the store with high-tech zoning, mapping and point-to-point driver directions.

Houston-based POS software maker Revention recently added a zone-and-grid feature that sales director Laura Gaudin said allows operators to define delivery areas on the POS and to create grids that improve expediting by automatically clustering orders geographically. An expediter also can prompt the POS to print point-to-point driving directions for the quickest possible route.

"For example, the POS screen would show every order in a particular grid, and the expediter would highlight only the orders he wants each driver to take," Gaudin said. "Then the driver would hit the map button for turn-by-turn directions."

The software zones delivery areas, which Revention customer Mangia Stuffed Pizza uses to apply delivery charges.

"We have different charges based on how far you are from the store," said Gerald Freeny, director of operations for four-unit Mangia, based in Austin, Texas. Zone 1 customers pay a dollar for delivery, and the fee increases by a dollar in each of zones 2 and 3. "It's convenient to know immediately where the customer is and what the fee will be."

Human interface

For all its gee-wizardry, Gaudin stressed the zone-and-grid feature isn't designed to replace a human expediter. Its role is to provide abundant information to dispatch decision makers.

"As good as this is, probably the best way to handle the rush is to have someone there making the final assessments," she said. The expediter can tell the POS to sort all the orders by grid, and then send drivers out with orders most tightly clustered — just the way it's done manually, but much faster.

"Since the zone is printed on each ticket, we can see orders in H-32 and H-33, know they're real close together and send one driver to take both," said Freeny. "But if we see H-32 and M-36, we know that two different people will take each order."

The software goes a step further by telling the expediter the status of all orders still working, and merges that information with its mapping capabilities.

"It codes everything," Freeny began. "We can color-code time frames to know how long an order's been in dispatch, from the time it's been placed to the time it goes out on a delivery. So whether something's 'hot,' or it's at the 'caution' level at the point of being 'late,' we know exactly what's going on."

Though such information is typically viewed at the dispatch terminal, Revention's software allows a manager to pull it up on any POS screen in the store.

"That's a great tool," Freeny added, "because he knows whether everything is flowing or whether there's something going on he needs to be more aware of."