Oosterzele, August 17^th, 2022 – Last month, Leen Bakker’s delivery team “Last Smile” successfully went live with Conundra’s route planning system, OptiFlow. The company’s goal is to achieve maximum efficiency though qualitative route planning for their 40 vehicles and more than 100 drivers operating throughout Flanders and The Netherlands.

In 2020, Leen Bakker established its own home delivery and installation service to meet the increasing demand for convenience among customers. According to Bob De Nijs, Operational Director at Leen Bakker and Kwantum, consumers increasingly want to be unburdened. “We noticed a trend of people opting for home delivery”, he explains. “On one hand, it's because some people, like the elderly, are no longer able to do it themselves. On the other hand, people also want to spend their time on other things and outsource it." As a result, the delivery service has become a full-fledged operation in just two years, now responsible for more than half of all deliveries. However, De Nijs emphasizes that the company's rapid growth calls for more efficient route planning tools than Excel and Google Maps, which were no longer feasible. "We needed a modern route planning system," he says. With OptiFlow, Leen Bakker can continue expanding their delivery service, with the aim of delivering even more orders themselves.

Challenges manual route planning

Over the past two years, Leen Bakker has run into numerous challenges when it comes to manually planning their transport. For example, the significant amount of time planners would need to be able to create reliable plan. “Our planners were mostly busy with manual actions and little with planning. Thanks to a modern route planning system, our planners are better able to concentrate on the profession of planning.”

Choosing OptiFlow

De Nijs indicates that most companies in his sector use more traditional software in the transport planning market. However, with OptiFlow he believes in achieving the best results by far. “The reason we ultimately chose OptiFlow is because the software is actually more modern in terms of the algorithms it uses and the way in which the planning is generated. As a result, we are convinced that more efficiency can be achieved than with other existing systems.” According to De Nijs, the collaboration between Leen Bakker and Conundra is going very smoothly. Both parties aim to go live with Leen Bakker’s store distribution planning as well, by the end of this year.

About Leen Bakker

In 2019, Leen Bakker celebrated its 100^th anniversary. With 170 branches and 2,500 employees in the Netherlands and Belgium, and a web shop with a 20% share of the total turnover, Leen Bakker is one of the largest omnichannel retailers in the home furnishings sector. Together with Kwantum, they form the Homefashion Group.