Why HVAC wholesalers should move away from paper-based delivery and what a fully digital process – from the warehouse to the signature – changes.
Six o’clock in the morning at a plumbing, heating and air-conditioning wholesaler’s warehouse. The first delivery vehicles are ready and waiting. Customer orders are waiting to be dispatched in the warehouse. The dispatch team has already allocated the orders to the delivery routes, taking into account delivery areas, vehicle capacities and customer requirements. The delivery notes for today’s routes are lying on the desk. The driver goes through the documents, determines the order of the stops based on his experience and local knowledge, and organises the load accordingly. Whilst the delivery runs are underway, the dispatch team stays in contact with the drivers to deal with any queries or last-minute changes. However, the exact progress of the routes is not always visible in real time. Whether all deliveries have been made as planned can often only be fully verified once the vehicles have returned, by checking the signed delivery notes.
Logistics in the plumbing, heating and air-conditioning wholesale sector: a special case.
Hardly any other sector places such varied demands on delivery as the plumbing, heating and air-conditioning wholesale trade. Supplies are delivered to both tradespeople and building sites, often within tight timeframes and with different points of contact on site.
Added to this is a product range that poses a challenge for any loading plan:
- Small but heavy: fittings, pumps and valves pack a lot of weight into a small space.
- Large and lightweight: insulation material, shower trays and ventilation components fill the load compartment without utilising the full payload capacity.
- The return journey counts too: on many rounds, returns and empties are collected straight away and must be recorded.
In many places, this is organised in the traditional way: route planning is based on orders and delivery areas; the warehouse loads the vehicles using paper delivery notes; and the driver decides the order of their stops themselves. At the customer’s premises, deliveries are signed for on paper, whilst returns and empties are recorded by hand. Feedback to dispatch and administration is only provided after the delivery round. Whilst every wholesaler has its own variations on this, the basic pattern is remarkably similar.
Where time and money are wasted.
The problem is rarely a single error, but rather the accumulation of minor disruptions in the process. Logistics managers in the plumbing, heating and air-conditioning wholesale sector encounter five of these time and again:
- Media breaks: Information changes medium several times as it moves between planning, the warehouse and the driver. From the ERP system to paper, from paper to the driver’s mind, and back into the system again in the evening. Every such change takes time and creates opportunities for errors.
- Routes based on experience: When drivers plan their own routes, experience takes precedence over calculations. This works, but is often not the best approach and costs time every day, which quickly adds up to hours across a fleet.
- Operating in the dark whilst on a delivery round: It is often unclear whether a delivery has already been made whilst the round is still in progress. This applies both to the dispatch team and to the office staff who have to respond to customer enquiries.
- Telephone ping-pong: A lack of information leads to back-and-forth enquiries between the driver and the dispatcher. This ties up both parties and distracts the driver from the road.
- Paperwork after work: Signed delivery notes, recorded returns and empties must be entered and filed manually after the round. This follow-up work ends up with the admin team and delays invoicing.
Three questions for your own business.
You can find out where your own business stands by asking three simple questions:
- When it comes to loading and delivery, do you still use paper delivery notes, or have you already gone digital?
- How do the signed delivery notes get back from the driver to your ERP system today, and how long does it take?
- How do warehouse staff and drivers coordinate when loading your vehicles?
Anyone who hesitates over at least one question has potential. This also applies to businesses that already use a system or are satisfied with their current processes: taking a look at the end-to-end process, from loading to digital proof of delivery, often reveals where gaps still exist between siloed solutions.
Conclusion.
The digitalisation of deliveries is not an end in itself in the plumbing, heating and air-conditioning (SHK) wholesale sector. It eases the workload for drivers, dispatchers and administration alike, and makes the delivery status visible at all times. Above all, it speeds up the process from delivery confirmation to invoicing. Particularly for retailers with their own fleet of ten or more vehicles, the minutes saved per stop quickly add up to a noticeable benefit. Users in the wholesale and logistics sectors – from plumbing, heating and air-conditioning wholesalers to large logistics groups – demonstrate that such solutions are practical.
