Aptean Home Delivery Case Study: Dreams

Dreams is the UK’s number one specialist bed retailer. Selling over 10,000 mattresses, bases and headboards per week to customers nationwide through its store network of over 200 sites and online.

Dreams manufactures around 8,000 mattresses a week at its UK based factory. These products are then distributed via nine dedicated distribution centers to customers anywhere in the country via a fleet of over 100 Dreams delivery vans.

In order to boost their operational efficiencies and offer a more flexible home delivery system for its customers, Dreams has invested in Aptean Home Delivery and Aptean Routing & Scheduling Paragon Edition software to help optimize processes.

The Challenge

With customers able to book a delivery to their own convenience, Dreams saw the need for a more advanced home delivery system that would help them offer the flexibility and choice to customer while retaining their service levels and boosting efficiencies.

• Processing over 12,000 deliveries per week

• Operating 9 home delivery depots

• Fleet of 100 x 3.5-ton Mercedes Sprinter vans

The Solution

To cover the whole of the UK, Dreams currently operates eight home delivery depots, with its ninth depot opening soon in Scotland. The deliveries are made using the company’s fleet of 100 x 3.5-ton Mercedes Sprinter vans. They need a solution that would integrate seamlessly with the GPS tracking units in their fleet and provide real-time delivery updates and accurate ETAs to ensure maximum efficiency and customer satisfaction.

The Result

Dreams now uses Aptean Home Delivery to plan all its UK routes and schedules from its UK head office. The system provides a selection of optimized delivery days and customers choose the one that suits them at the point of sale or when they make an online purchase.

The integration of Aptean Routing & Scheduling Paragon Edition allows Dreams to monitor delivery progress in real-time. The new advanced system provides a live report feed, which is published on the Dreams intranet to show how deliveries are progressing and allows our customer service team to keep customers updated with ETAs. They can see the exact status of each delivery, whether the van is at the customer’s home or has completed the delivery and is on its way to the next drop.

• Seamless integration with GPS vehicle tracking

• Real-time progress of home deliveries

• Customer service team kept updated with live ETAs

• Ability to offer customers optimized delivery dates at point of sale

Watch the video to learn more of the success story.

"We offer customers the ability to book a delivery up to 90 days in advance if they require it; typically, most choose between 10 and 15 days after making a purchase. We also have much more flexibility to move deliveries around if we need to and we can close off routes earlier. In fact, with the latest version of the software we can also shut off a depot early and we can pause specific routes, if necessary, to maximize efficiency. When a Dreams customer buys a bed our Microsoft Dynamics NAV system will calculate the earliest availability for the product. This information feeds through to Aptean Home Delivery, which then works out the available delivery dates to offer the customer. The information is presented graphically to our sales staff in red, amber and green, with green being the most efficient delivery." - Ian Clarke, Change Controller, Dreams.