Delivering Better Control & Visibility of Distribution through Route Execution and Mobility Applications: GreenMile, LLC

“With over 250 installations in more than 20 countries worldwide, GreenMile solutions are responsible for managing over 35,000 vehicles every single day.”

A great route plan can only take you so far. Effective fleet operations require the flexibility to adjust and respond to the day-to-day realities once vehicles leave the depot and execute on the road. Route performance vs. plan should be measured continuously to achieve maximum productivity, meet customer expectations, and support continuous improvement.

GreenMile Technologies was formed by a group of executives with over 7 decades of combined experience in the last mile logistics & software industry. Founded in 2011, GreenMile has quickly evolved to become the market’s most innovative and robust SaaS based end-to-end enterprise platform, providing customers with route execution, real-time dispatching, actual versus plan reporting, mobility applications, and vehicle telematics along with a full service territory planning and route optimization consulting division. Headquartered in Orlando, FL with offices in São Paulo & Fortaleza, Brazil, and a network of value-added resellers around the globe, GreenMile has once again been selected as a Top Green Provider for 2016 by Food Logistics.

GreenMile’s Journey
Ronald Barcellos implemented routing & scheduling solutions in some of the largest companies around the globe for more than 10 years, after which he realized that while building an efficient route plan was important, the real hurdle for companies needing to distribute their products was ensuring that the plan was executed correctly once the drivers left the distribution center. Much of the cost savings planned by customers was lost due to inefficient execution in the field. Existing GPS & telematics solutions in the market focused mainly on engine diagnostics and driver behavior and not true real-time actual-versus-planned logistics management. It was this critical route execution component that distributors needed to not only help reduce distribution costs but also ensure superior customer service levels. The founders were able to comprehend that without a solution that could truly connect planed-versus-actual data in the level of detail that was necessary, most delivery companies would not be able to realize all the optimization and cost savings they had planned. Identifying a gap and therefore a great opportunity, Ronald joined forces with Regis Melo, the company’s CTO and mastermind behind the technology platform; the company worked for over a year and in 2012 released the first version of the GreenMile Suite. From then on, GreenMile has expanded its customer based worldwide, with its main customer base in North, Central and South America, as well as several customers in Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.

An Overview of the Company’s solutions
The GreenMile suite delivers fleet performance tracking on mobile workers including drivers, service technicians, merchandisers and sales people, providing complete, real-time visibility into the delivery or service day. Their product offerings include GreenMile Live, GreenMile Driver, GreenMile Manager, GreenMile Sales, and GreenMile Merchandiser.

GreenMile Suite
The GreenMile Suite is an innovative, state-of-the-art technology platform designed to provide companies with real-time visibility over their mobile resources, whether they are delivery trucks, merchandisers, service technicians or sales reps, comparing their actual vs planned performance and proactively alerting the customers of critical deviations in the plan. It is done by comparing the route plan information from the clients routing software against detailed GPS data from a mobile device and or telematics solution. By providing companies with in-depth actual-versus-planned visibility and management over their mobile resources the GreenMile suite allows customers to track the performance of their mobile workers and thus reduce their mileage significantly, bringing down all costs associated with it such as fuel, vehicle maintenance and CO2 emissions. In addition, the suite allows companies to provide their clients with better customer service levels, ensuring they arrive within the promised time windows. GreenMile also alerts customers of any route execution issues in real time, such as a delivery cancelation and allow them to react immediately to solve it. No more huge upfront investments with long ROIs because GreenMile resides in the Cloud and is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution.

GreenMile’s way out of route execution troubles
The Company solves a huge problem faced by many transportation companies: route execution. GreenMile’s platform provides the logistics management middleware that connects route planning solutions to telematics solutions and mobile devices in the field, providing in-depth actual-versus-planned visibility and management over mobile resources in the field. In addition, GreenMile “learns” from the execution as it’s occurring and feeds this updated information back into route planning solutions, thus improving the quality of the planning data for better route optimization. Some of the strategic markets GreenMile currently serves are Beverage, Food, Retail, LPG, Healthcare and Field Service

Surpassing the Competition with Innovation & a Customer-centric approach

A few of the aspects that have made GreenMile successful:

• GreenMile has been recognized for always being a step ahead of its competitors in terms of technology and functionality. And they innovate – constantly. The company’s solutions have a clean, modern design with easy to use interfaces and features that create real value and ROI for their customer base.

• “Customers are a top priority” is set in stone at GreenMile; the company ensures that they closely coordinate with the customer to createa true partnership. This concept of focusing on the customer is evidenced by the fact that GreenMile still dedicates roughly 70% of its product roadmap to client improvement requests. Delivering customer-driven functionality is one of the key components helping GreenMile remainso successful in today’s ever-changing market landscape.

• Speedy response to customer requirements is another driving principle at GreenMile. An example of this can be seen in GreenMile’s software updates; updated versions of their solutions are released quarterly, each with dozens of new features and software improvements. With GreenMile’s incredibly energetic development team and a very agile development process they thrive on making the customer happy.

Wide-Ranging Adoption and Impressive Customer Portfolio
GreenMile serves top customers including Pepsi, Martins, Coca-Cola, Praxair, Reyes, Staples, RNDC Wine & Spirits and RaceTrac.

“We’ve been very impressed with GreenMile’s technology as well as their overall industry knowledge. They seamlessly interfaced their dispatching solution with our existing route optimization software, and GreenMile’s technology – and customer support – far exceeds what we were receiving from our previous vendor. We look forward to a long relationship with the GreenMile team.” – Todd Seufer, Manager of Sales Operations G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottlers, Inc.

“To say GreenMile saved us at the last minute from making a bad business decision would be an understatement. We were days away from purchasing another vendor’s telematics and dispatching system when we came across the GreenMile solution, and haven’t looked back since. Their telematics and delivery execution system makes GreenMile the company to beat in the product delivery space.” – John Friel, Corporate Distribution Director RNDC

RNDC partners with GreenMile to improve Productivity, Customer Service and Profits

Task at hand
Headquartered in Atlanta, GA, Republic National Distributing Company (RNDC) distributes wine, spirits, beer and other beverages from a network of 27 ware houses located across 19 states. With a delivery fleet of greater than 1,000 vehicles, RNDC services more than 15,000 customers each week. As the second largest wine and spirits distributor in the United States, RNDC requires aid to help maintain its competitive edge in the market and as an industry leader, RNDC is always on the lookout for innovative solutions and best practices to improve efficiency, productivity and customer service. To do a job right, you have to have visibility into what you’re doing which is why RNDC partnered with GreenMile to stay ahead of the pack.

Mission accomplished
RNDC now relies on GreenMile’s cloud-based dispatching technology in their transportation department to show them the real time status deliveries throughout the day. The Company instantly gained visibility into all the trucks and routes. “I can click on any one of them on my computer screen and see where the driver is, as well as when he will be at his next stop” said John Friel, Distribution Director for RNDC. GreenMile system is a ‘bridge’ between RNDC’s routing software and telematics devices. And since GreenMile is a fully responsive, web-based solution that resides in the cloud, the Company can access the technology via a web browser from anywhere – even from a mobile device. RNDC has gained an insight into the daily deliveries for every truck on every route in every location as well as valuable real-time visibility of critical activity. Their managers now have access to ‘Actual vs Plan’ information – where the driver & vehicle are physically located compared against where they’re supposed to be from the planned route for that day.

RNDC utilizes another GreenMile solution
The GreenMile Live solution has been introduced to all of RNDC’s major distribution centers. RNDC has also deployed the GreenMile Driver mobile application, which connects the driver’s mobile device directly to the cloud-based GreenMile fleet management solution. “It gives the driver a lot more power in the palm of his hand. The application can instantly alert our customer service and sales departments giving them real-­‐time visibility into any issues happening in the field such as miss-picks or reorders. It creates better communication between drivers, customer service, sales people and distribution management” Friel explains.

Significant Results
One of the immediate benefits gained with the GreenMile solution is more accurate data on service time – the time it takes for a driver to deliver a case of product to a customer location – and automatically updating the routing software with this information is critical for daily route optimization. “With more accurate data on service time, delivery routes can be managed more effectively to make optimal use of company resources – people and trucks – and improve customer service with more timely deliveries. GreenMile has become an invaluable customer service tool for us,” states Friel.

By improving efficiency, GreenMile Live is also helping RNDC reduce fuel costs and increase productivity. In just the first 6 months of running. GreenMile in their Jessup, MD location RNDC had used 11% fewer gallons of fuel than before.

The future road map
GreenMile has been growing aggressively over the past 3 years and will continue that trend going forward. The future seems to be getting better and better for the company, and as it continues to grow GreenMile focuses on making sure that they stick to their roots and do thethings that brought them to this point – constant innovation and a close relationship with their customers.

Meet the Pioneers behind GreenMile

Ronald Barcellos, CEO & Co-Founder – Ronald’s career spans more than 15 years in the development of new markets and business for supply chain and logistics software companies worldwide that began with his startup company E-novations, a Brazil-based company, which Ronald successfully led to become one of South America’s leading supply chain and logistics software resellers. In 2012 Ronald co-founded GreenMile to offer globally a set of solutions and services that provide companies worldwide with optimal logistics planning and real time visibility over logistics execution thus helping them be more effective and increase their profits.

Regis Melo, CTO & Co-Founder – Regis is the creator of the cloud-based GreenMile route execution platform and he is responsible for all aspects of GreenMile’s technology vision and software architecture. He brings more than 20 years of experience driving technology and architecture strategy for enterprise-class products.

“We are evangelists for helping our customers reduce their transportation costs – thus lowering their carbon footprint – all while helping them to provide outstanding levels of customer service in an ever changing and challenging business climate.”