Get Started with Routes and Tours

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Define routes and tours in direct store delivery.
  
• Describe the common challenges faced by delivery drivers and van sellers.
  
• Discuss the main roles in ‌direct store delivery, including the warehouse admin.
  

Before You Start

Before you start this module, consider completing the following recommended content.

• Direct Store Delivery and Van Sales Basics in Consumer Goods Cloud
  

Direct Store Delivery

It’s a beautiful Sunday morning. You’re looking forward to the coming week and want to fill your fridge and pantry with some essentials. So, you head to your neighborhood supermarket to grab some supplies.

You’ve just parked up when you notice a delivery truck pulling in. The driver hops out and starts unloading boxes. Chances are, the store has ordered these items, and now they’re going straight to the shelves. By the time you finish your shopping, the delivery van is pulling off, perhaps to the next delivery stop?

A direct delivery, straight from supplier to store, skips the usual distribution center. This type of supply chain model is called direct store delivery. It helps prevent empty shelves, speeds up restocking, and makes it easier for stores to manage inventory.

In direct store delivery, a route is a planned path that a driver follows to transport products from a supplier’s warehouse to retail stores. A tour, on the other hand, is more comprehensive. Based on a route, a tour includes a series of planned visits to customer sites in a designated geographic area. The person who carries out a tour is a delivery driver, van seller, or a combined role. Tours can also include related activities at the start and end of the day, plus the specific way goods are delivered onto retailer premises.

Field Personas in Direct Store Delivery

Direct store delivery involves many business processes such as order management, tour preparation, start-of-the-day and end-of-the-day activities, and tour monitoring. Different field and warehouse workers play their part to ensure the right products make their way to customers.

The two key roles are delivery drivers and van sellers, who are typically employed by the manufacturer.

In some markets, such as small-format stores and traditional markets, a hybrid role does the job of a driver, pre-seller, and merchandiser all at once for resource efficiency.

If you completed Direct Store Delivery and Van Sales Basics in Consumer Goods Cloud, you’ve already met David Lopez, delivery truck driver for Alpine Group Nutrition and Beverages. David finds Alpine Group’s current delivery system cumbersome and outdated due to all the manual monitoring of inventory required. Plus, there’s no hybrid user for those in charge of all the store delivery tasks.

Warehouse Personas in Direct Store Delivery

While delivery drivers and van sellers work primarily outside the warehouse, the operations staff tend to work at the warehouse facility.

When it comes to consumer goods delivery, the role of the warehouse admin is paramount. They ‌make product distribution as smooth as possible by defining optimal routes and tours for delivery drivers to follow. Routes and tours must be strategic and efficient.

The Warehouse Admin Role

Meet Fatima Daniels, the warehouse admin for Alpine Group. She works on digital solutions for warehouse operations and delivery execution.

Fatima, along with the sales manager of Alpine Group, strives to maintain a constant supply of goods to customer stores, and to reduce out-of-stock situations. Their go-to solution is Salesforce CG Cloud, which Alpine Group uses to collaborate with retail partners and ensure successful retail sales. Fatima’s mission is to simplify the tour preparation and management process for delivery truck drivers like David.

Using the direct store delivery features in CG Cloud, Fatima revamps the process of setting up and managing delivery tours. Now all the drivers at Alpine Group, including David, enjoy smooth and expedient routes and tours from the warehouses, to retail customer stores, and back again.

Tour Preparation in Direct Store Delivery

For managing the direct store delivery supply chain, tour preparation is key. Warehouse admins must plan out the activities in a way so that the drivers can deliver the required stock on time, without facing obstacles along the way. This means managing the sequence of store visits to improve delivery times and minimize the distance driven.

Fatima is responsible for creating delivery routes and van-sales tours that integrate with the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. She also sets up warehouses and associated users—such as drivers and vehicles like delivery trucks—along with products, all based on ERP system data. Additionally, she configures market- and tour-specific settings, including vehicle identification and checks, time tracking, permitted van sales order types, required inventory check-ins, and object references.

In this unit, you learned about the basics of direct store delivery and van sales, along with the roles and responsibilities of various field and warehouse personas in the direct store delivery (DSD) supply chain model. You also learned the basics of routes and tours in direct store delivery.

In the next unit, learn how the warehouse admin works on each of the steps involved in the tour preparation process.

Resources

• Trailhead: Direct Store Delivery and Van Sales Basics in Consumer Goods Cloud
• Salesforce Help: Key Concepts of DSD and Van Sales