Event
Summary
LaserShip.com, a nationwide online network of independent same-day delivery
companies in the U.S., has licensed Descartes' DeliveryNet solution for
transportation and logistics to enable the distribution of e-commerce
purchases to businesses and consumers. Headquartered in McLean, Virginia,
Lasership has assembled a nationwide network of over 225 courier companies
in more than 80 cities that it uses to deliver a wide range of products
from partner retailers to their customers. While it is currently focused
on B2B transactions, the company has indicated it may one day apply its
delivery capabilities to the business-to-consumer market.
Lasership
will use Descartes' Route Optimization solution, which forms a component
of DeliveryNet applications for home delivery and logistics. The route
scheduling module can perform static or dynamic street-level routing with
fine geographic granularity to generate highly accurate driving directions
and scheduling precision. Optimization is achieved through sophisticated
routing algorithms and highly detailed street-level maps to produce optimal,
least-cost routes by factoring multiple parameters and constraints.
Market
Impact
Lasership and other pioneers in the field of same-day delivery, such as
DeliverEtoday.com (also a Descartes client), have a distinct advantage
over the Amazon.coms of the world in that they can offer same-day delivery
at a potentially lower cost than the overnight delivery option at many
centralized Internet retailers. The downside is that inventory many not
be available for certain items in a customer's local region, requiring
multi-day delivery times through a distributed network that may not be
properly equipped for long-distance shipments.
Descartes'
solutions are designed to address the complicated logistics requirements
of companies like Lasership, which are made more difficult by security
issues and demand that can be impossible to predict. In fact, the difficulties
are so large that advanced supply chain optimization and visibility solutions
such as those offered by Descartes are a veritable necessity for same-day
delivery service providers.
User
Recommendations
Same day delivery is a relatively recent phenomenon for the Internet,
especially of a scale to that which Lasership aspires. Those companies
wishing to take on Lasership and DeliverEtoday directly or even those
who want to improve the efficiency of existing delivery services should
place Descartes on a short list of vendors, partly because it has rich
functionality in routing and scheduling, but also because it has many
other products aimed at logistics-intensive companies and also has considerable
experience in deploying its solutions over the Internet in a hosted model.