Liberty Wines Deliveries Flow Better with Paragon Routing Software

London wine wholesaler Liberty Wines is boosting its delivery service with an advanced route planning and scheduling system from Paragon Software Systems. The software incorporates street level mapping for accurate routing and has special Olympics planning functionality to ensure that Liberty’s customers receive their daily orders on time during the games. The software will integrate with Liberty’s order processing system (Vintner) to speed the planning process. Liberty also anticipates that Paragon’s Single Depot software solution will enable better use of its delivery fleet resources.

“Paragon will enable us to plan more efficiently and effectively, making better use of our vehicle fleet and improving the service to our customers. The street level-mapping option we have selected takes account of road constraints such as one-way streets, no-entries and turn restrictions. This will help us to plan and manage our London deliveries with greater accuracy, where timed deliveries to leading restaurants are a key part of our service offering. The pre-programmed Olympic planning feature is extremely important as we are located on the Olympic Route Network and this will ensure we provide the best service during the games,” says Ben Marriott, Customer Services Manager at Liberty Wines.

Liberty Wines runs a fleet of large delivery vans for daily deliveries throughout London and once weekly deliveries to customers throughout the Home Counties. About 80 per cent of fleet resources are subcontractors, with some Liberty Wines’ own vehicles and drivers. The new software will maximise their loads and plan the delivery schedules and routes automatically, highlighting where there is spare capacity.

“The majority of our drivers are subcontractors who are paid a daily rate. When we plan manually we can only estimate start and finish of their runs, but with Paragon we’ll have visibility of their workloads,” says Ben Marriott. “We’ll also have the added benefit of knowing precisely which vehicle and driver is delivering each order without searching through paperwork; the information will be available to us at the push of a button.”

Liberty Wines offers a unique customer service that allows London customers to place orders at any time of the day or night for delivery the next day. This around the clock ordering is what sets the company apart from its competitors, resulting in as many as 200 deliveries a day. To streamline order processing and fulfilment, the company’s Vintner system will export the order and delivery requirements into Paragon, which will then automatically create the delivery routes and schedules. This information is uploaded back to the order processing system to update the customer records. This also provides accurate data for management reporting on delivery performance.

Paragon Software Systems is a market leader in transport optimisation with over 1,500 routing and scheduling systems installed in more than 33 countries. Paragon helps companies reduce transport costs by up to 20 per cent through more efficient deployment of vehicles and drivers. Headquartered in Dorking, UK and with US offices in Dallas, Paragon is a respected pioneer in routing and scheduling with over 30 years of know-how.

Paragon is employed by transport operations ranging from just 10 vehicles at a single site to hundreds of vehicles operating from several sites. The system is used for routing and scheduling optimisation; managing transport resources; strategic planning; scheduling home deliveries continuously as orders are being confirmed; and managing the execution of the transport plan in real time using vehicle tracking technology.

Paragon assists many leading companies with their logistics including ASDA, Royal Mail Group, Harrods, Sainsbury's, AB Agri, CEVA Logistics, Wincanton, DHL Exel, Norbert Dentressangle, Linde, Fuller's, John Lewis, Tesco, Keystone Distribution, Raleigh and many others.