What is In-Sourcing of Fleet? In food delivery, the fleet comprises the vehicles and drivers that are responsible for carrying out the delivery journey. This fleet can be maintained by the restaurant itself, or it can be outsourced to another company that specializes in delivery management or fleet management. The food delivery market is undergoing rapid global expansion and each restaurant wants to cut the mark to the top. In a survey, 47% of restaurant managers claimed that they were confused about whether in-house fleet management or outsourcing of their fleet would be the most suitable option for their business.
What Does Fleet Management Comprise?
Fleet Management comprises a multitude of different features that ensure that the food delivery process is carried out flawlessly. These are the key elements of fleet management:
- Vehicle Management
- Cost Optimization
- Workforce Management
- Cross-departmental Collaboration
- Communication and Feedback Management
- Legal Administration
What are the Benefits of In-Sourcing of Your Fleet?
In-Sourcing your restaurant fleet or managing it in-house, in other words, has a lot of potential benefits for your food delivery business. Here are some potential advantages:
- Ability to Follow Brand Guidelines
In today’s competitive nature of the food business industry, it is highly important for brands to have a strong identity in the market. By in-sourcing the fleet, they will be able to carry out operations based on the principles that their brand believes in and create a great market image.
- Stay Directly Connected with Customers
In-sourcing increases the chance to connect and communicate with customers. Not only would you be able to communicate with them easily but you will also be able to take and incorporate their feedback into the delivery process more efficiently.
- Work at Your Own Terms
One of the biggest and generally known disadvantages of outsourcing deliveries is that you have to compromise on operations and goals in order to work under the conditions and terms of the second company handling the delivery services. By in-sourcing, you can handle delivery operations at the time and way you want.
What are the Disadvantages of In-Sourcing of Your Fleet?
In-Sourcing of the delivery fleet can have many disadvantages as well. Here are some of the most common of them:
- Increased Costs
If not managed with perfection, fleet management can become a burden on the procket. This is because there may be additional costs of hiring more fleet staff, managing and maintaining vehicles and fuel, there may be costs added due to mismanagement of the fleet and this can also cause loss in terms of customers that would occur due to poor delivery of the food.
- Complete Responsibility of Delivery Operations
Another disadvantage can be that if you are not completely experienced or professional in carrying out successful and market competitive delivery operations, insourcing of the fleet can become a burden for you in terms of responsibility. Your own management will be responsible for ensuring that all processes go smoothly.
- Difficulty in Managing Staff
In-house sourcing is problematic in the sense that it causes difficulties and issues in managing the staff and other aspects of the delivery journey. Unless there is fleet management or delivery management software installed, managers can find it very difficult to look over the reporting and management of the entire staff. This can be a burden on resources and can also hinder other activities, such as growth.
The Final Verdict
It can be concluded that there is no correct or wrong answer to whether your restaurant should have in-sourcing of fleet or not. Many factors can play an important role in the decision making process for this, such as the size of your restaurant, your budget, plans for scaling, the size of your fleet, etc. If you have a competent fleet and a Delivery Management Software with complete capabilities of Route Optimization Software and Fleet Management Software, then you can manage an in-house fleet professionally and there will be no need to out-source the food delivery process.
Shipox is a data-driven Fleet Management Software that enables its users across a multitude of diverse industries to avail market competitive features and customer support in order to automate and perfect their delivery process. Shipox users are able to increase the efficiency of their delivery process, optimize their costs effectively, and enhance their customer experiences.It can help to increase the rate of first day delivery success. To learn more, you can sign up for a quick demo here.