Fleet Management for FMCG

A distribution route is evaluated on outlets served, not kilometres run. Two routes covering the same distance can differ enormously in how many outlets were actually worked.

What is worth recording per outlet is arrival time, dwell time and whether a transaction occurred. Dwell time is the revealing one: a two-minute stop at an outlet that needs ten did not do the job.

Comparing dwell time across routes for similar outlet types is what separates territory difficulty from salesman behaviour.

Systems that record a drop as delivered or not delivered force the person on the ground to choose a wrong answer, and the correction happens later by phone.

A usable record captures what was accepted, what was refused and why, and what was collected as a return, all at the point of delivery with photographs.

That is what settles the deduction argument three weeks later, and it is why ePOD matters more in FMCG than in most sectors.

This dispute recurs constantly and is unwinnable without a record.

A timestamped, geotagged arrival at the outlet settles it in seconds, and the knowledge that the record exists changes how often the claim is made at all.

The same record protects the delivery person, which matters for retention in a role with high turnover.

The number that predicts route performance is time spent in market versus time spent in transit and at the depot.

Measuring it exposes routes where the depot turnaround, not the market, is the constraint — a common finding, and one that is fixed by loading process rather than by pushing the field team harder.

It also identifies routes that have outgrown a single day, which is a planning decision rather than a performance one.