SmartRoutes soars in line with Irish appetite for online services

Revenue at SmartRoutes grew five-fold in 2020. The route planning software service has plans to take on 10 new staff

David and Blake Walsh, brothers and co-founders of SmartRoutes. Picture: Darragh Kane

Businesses from food service to medical supplies have taken to online like ducks to water, say the founders of SmartRoutes, a route planning and optimisation solutions specialist. 

The client list alone on SmartRoutes.io goes some way towards telling the story of how mission-critical home delivery has become: Homecare Medical, Bradys Ham, Deliver IT, J. Grennan & Sons Transport, Le Patissier, along with newspapers including Irish Independent, Irish Times and Irish Examiner.

That, however, is just the tip of this Cork-based software company's story. You'd rightly think all of the above businesses already knew a lot about route planning. The accelerated migration of consumers towards online platforms turned some unexpected stones.

“When we started this up, we thought it would be all about saving mileage for our clients, plotting faster routes and saving time for someone already doing this in the office, just telling drivers what their route would be for the day,” said Blake Walsh, who founded SmartRoutes in 2017 along with his brother David.

“We thought the road savings would really be the main thing. We thought it would be all about delivery. In fact, the people creating and planning routes have quite a number of motivators.

“One brewing company that has worked with us told us that their sales reps find things like using the app to take notes is very useful. Le Patissier, which delivers to restaurants and hotels in Dublin, says the biggest saving has been in the time spent by the person in the office looking after this planning.

“The feedback from their customers has also been very positive, people getting the exact cake they ordered, delivered to their door at the agreed time. The customer gets all the info via text or email, they know exactly when to expect the delivery, so there are no complaints and nobody ringing asking questions about deliveries.” 

Similarly, agribusiness J. Grennan & Sons Transport, in Offaly, has been involved in logistics since 1878. The company always has a sizeable team of people working in planning on any given day. Engaging with SmartRoutes is delivering efficiencies and driving sales.

Their planners now have instant access to all of the customer data, with instant visibility on daily delivery plans. The case study info on SmartRoutes.io shows how the Grennans have made gains in relation to managing their seasonality, any peaks and troughs, abnormal loads and/or part loads.

Of course, the Covid pandemic has also added hugely to the volume and complexity of customers' use of online services. Businesses are seeing far more online traffic, new customers and new routes, with the need for efficient digital communications and tracking.

“For Homecare Medical, we quickly had all logistics and admin staff trained on our intuitive Desktop Route Planner, and all drivers onboarded with the Mobile Driver apps,” said Blake Walsh. "The ability to set separate start and end locations for routes on a driver-by-driver basis also meant that drivers could return home directly after a route, knowing in advance what time they could expect to finish their working day. 

“Similarly, for one healthy meal delivery company using our software, one key question was how to divide up the data, and which job to give which driver, how to organise shifts.

“We have couriers who are delighted with what our system has brought them. We also have a lot of hotels that weren't used to doing home deliveries. For them, getting a customer's address wrong and losing hours en route was just not an option.”

 Not surprisingly, SmartRoutes has plans to create ten new jobs, doubling its workforce for the second year in a row to meet the demand for its service. The new openings will include business development and software engineering roles.

Revenue at the company also grew five-fold last year. SmartRoutes also has plans to move to a new office space from its current headquarters in Cook Street, Cork, once Covid-19 restrictions are lifted.  The company also has plans to expand its operations in the UK, where a number of furniture and hospitality companies are already using its software.

SmartRoutes also has one client in Australia, a vendor of mangos in Brisbane who found the service online.

The company has made huge strides since 2017, when Blake and David decided to launch the business. They both have a shared business background, but bring quite different specialised skills.

Both are graduates of Business Information Systems at UCC. Blake then moved onto project management, while David went down the tech route.

David built the core software upon which the business is founded. Blake is more focused on the management side of the business.

David Walsh, CEO and co-founder of SmartRoutes, said: “2020 was a year of phenomenal growth for SmartRoutes. It was amazing to see all the different types of businesses that benefited from using our platform.

“Whether they were looking to reduce their distribution costs, reduce their carbon footprint or get greater control and insight over their delivery operations, SmartRoutes was able to provide them with a solution. This has given us great confidence to grow our company and we have aggressive plans to tackle international markets next year.”

SmartRoutes.io