“Paragon has effectively enabled us to re-evaluate our transport operation with minimum fuss,” says Steve Anderson, organisation manager.

The software has now been rolled out at three sites and is showing savings of £300,000 at Birmingham, and a combined saving of £500,000 at Ruislip and Leeds.

Anderson says he expects these savings to continue stacking up as it is rolled out across more depots.

The company has also improved customer service, as it can now guarantee ETAs to the nearest 15 minutes.

Liberty Wines, a London-based national wines wholesaler, turned to automated R&S planning partly because it offers better control and streamlining of its mixed fleet, which comprises 80% subcontractors.

“The majority of our drivers are long-term subcontractors who are paid a daily rate. When we plan manually we can only estimate start and finish of their runs, but we’ll have visibility of their workloads,” says customer services manager Ben Marriott.

Iceland has invested in what supplier Route Monkey believes to be the largest roll-out of R&S software in any UK van fleet.

It wanted to boost the performance of its home delivery fleet of 1,300 vehicles across 800 stores.

Unlike many operations, which can schedule each morning, Iceland’s customers will be offered the next available two-hour slot, whenever they shop, meaning routes are recalculated in real-time.

“It enables us to optimise the use of our fleet and driver resources, while also reducing our fleet mileage and emissions.

"We conducted extensive trials and were extremely pleased with the return on investment.

"It allows us to do more deliveries in fewer miles,” says director of delivered sales John Mackie.

The company also tailored the software to work with new PDA kit, and a deviation function, which sends an alert to drivers or managers if the vehicle is a set percentage off course or off timescale.

Most R&S software will integrate with other Windows-based logistics and fleet software, such as telematics, tracking and fleet management systems, but the extent of potential integration is a question operators should always ask.

Some systems, such as Route Monkey, are very much delivered in whatever form the company wants it, whether integrated with an in-house system or standalone.

There are also exceptions, as in the case of parcels carrier XPD, where the algorithm behind the Route Monkey software has been embedded directly into the parcel company’s own system.