Robust routing and scheduling solution supports business development - confidence in quality of results 'crucial'

Paragon Software Systems' routing and scheduling solution has been selected by Bibby Distribution, the UK's leading independent logistics company, for strategic planning use throughout its business.

Bibby Distribution currently operates more than 1,000 vehicles out of 60 operating centres employing over 2,500 staff and sought to standardise strategic routing and scheduling within its business development team, responsible for designing transport solutions for current and prospective customers.

"We needed a solution which was both totally reliable and easy to use," confirms Martin O'Reilly, general manager business development. "Following a competitive selection process, we chose Paragon as offering a proven robust solution, underpinned by the company's unmatched strategic planning experience.

"Once we saw the quality of results during the testing phase, it rapidly became obvious that Paragon was the ideal choice to meet our demanding requirements."

Paragon was installed in August and is used to improve the delivery of a wide range of business development activities, including modelling new distribution operations, calculating resource requirements and transport costs and costing alternative strategies.

The benefits have been both immediate and impressive. "Specific functionality, such as Paragon's multi-period planner capability, has proved extremely useful in enabling us to plan over longer timescales," says O'Reilly.

"More broadly, however, the ability to respond quickly to clients and prospects is paramount in the logistics market," he believes, "and here, Paragon not only enables us to input data and run analyses faster but, critically, also gives us complete confidence in the output."