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Table of Contents

• What is Courier Software?
• The benefits of Courier Software
• Typical features of Courier Software
• The cost of Courier Software
• Considerations when purchasing Courier Software
• Relevant Courier Software trends

What is Courier Software?

Courier Software is a tool primarily used by courier companies and eCommerce businesses to automate operations-related tasks involved in delivering a package, from collection to dispatch. These processes include managing delivery schedules, package labeling, barcode generation, courier assignment, route planning, vehicle tracking, fuel management, expense tracking, and online payments.

The benefits of Courier Software

The benefits of courier software vary depending on unique business requirements. Here are a few notable ones:

• Better customer experience: Courier software enables customers to track their package-in-transit by providing real-time updates about estimated time of arrival (ETAs). Additionally, customers can provide delivery feedback and ratings to share their experience. Many systems also offer customer portals so that repeat customers can save time with their deliveries by drawing on previously stored details.
• Operational efficiency: Courier software allows users to ensure each package gets delivered on time by generating optimized route plans based on driver’s availability, traffic status, and priority. Also, important information such as employee details, customer data, vehicle location, and delivery status is stored in a central repository for easy access, analysis, and reporting.
• Data security: Courier software only allows admins to manage user permission, thus allowing authorized users to access confidential data. Most of these software vendors follow data security guidelines and are GDPR compliant to store customer data. The cloud storage also ensures full data backup and restoration in case of manual mistakes.

Typical features of Courier Software

• Delivery tracking: Track the courier status by assigning a unique AWB-tracking number to each package.
• Routing: Create optimized route plans for delivery drivers to reduce fuel consumption and ensure timely delivery.
• Dispatch management: Schedule courier pick-up, delivery partner, vehicle, break-time and delivery date in a shared calendar based on the driver's availability.
• Customer database: Store customer information in a central, searchable database.
• GPS tracking: Allow customers to follow live delivery status.
• Reporting/Analytics: Create dashboards to present and analyze major KPIs such as number of deliveries, late deliveries, delivery ratings, and fuel consumption in a month.

The cost of Courier Software

Most products in the market are priced on a “per user, per month” basis and can be divided into three pricing tiers based on their starting price.

Price ranges*:

• $9 - $12
• $12 - $39
• $39+

*The pricing included is for the entry-level/lowest-priced offering found on vendor websites on Aug 5, 2021. These ranges correspond to the 25th, 75th, and 100th percentiles of pricing information gathered from vendor websites of sample products.

The above list summarizes pricing for the base plans of most products. An enterprise or premium product that is priced higher may include additional features such as booking management, proof of delivery, driver app, customer portal, labels, and branded customer experience.

Considerations when purchasing Courier Software

Buyers need to keep the following points in mind when purchasing courier software for their business:

• Integration: While researching courier software, consider your existing software infrastructure. It is important that your new courier software integrates well with other tools such as accounting and CRM to manage broader business processes and customer information more effectively.
• Features: In addition to managing end-to-end courier delivery, the software offers other modules to manage business processes such as online payment and document generation across multiple locations. It's important to determine your requirements before you start searching for a courier solution to ensure you're paying for the functionality you need.
• Mobile access: As courier managers need to communicate delivery updates such as a change in the planned route to drivers who are mostly on the move, mobile-ready courier software allows them to log records and access schedules from wherever they are.

Relevant Courier Software trends

• Delivery droids and drones: To achieve higher efficiency, eCommerce and other logistic businesses are testing driverless robots and drones to deliver orders. They are equipped with sensors, cameras, GPS, and other technical elements that enable them to fulfill delivery requirements. This step is expected to help in reducing delivery time, expenses, and fuel consumptions. eCommerce giant, Amazon, is working on Prime Air—a courier service that will use drones to deliver customer orders within 30 minutes of ordering.