3 Lessons Tom Brady Teaches Dispatchers and Drivers

There are outliers in sports who prove that age is just a number! Tom Brady is one among them! 

Tom Brady defied many odds as a player. The average retirement age for a National Football League (NFL) player is in their 20s, and very few cross their 30s and stay relevant. But Tom Brady got into the NFL draft at 23 and played till age 46 for 23 seasons. 

Tom Brady outplayed his opponents with his impeccable quarterback skills. After he entered the NFL league, the debate on quarterbacks in the NFL circles transformed into Tom Brady vs others. That’s how the man dominated the field with his strategies in quarterbacking and his role in winning tournaments. 

Dispatchers and drivers have valuable lessons in logistics to learn from this legendary quarterback player. Let’s dive in! 

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1. Short-Passes With Perfect Timing – Cost-Efficient Routes Are the Key to On-Time Deliveries

Tom Brady wasn’t a quarterback who explosively threw the ball with big-armed passes. He was known for his short, measured, surgical, and quick passes to receivers with perfect timing. Ask any NFL analyst or follower; they will tell us that arm strength is a significant asset. But it works only when the player can pick the best target, diagnose defenses, and put the ball in the right place. As his pocket feel was good and release was short and quick, Tom Brady didn’t need to run. 

Every dispatcher plays a critical role of a quarterback. They need to pass on the orders to the right drivers and deliver them at the right time so that their organizations can win more customers and increase revenues. But how do dispatchers ensure orders are assigned to the right driver and fulfilled effectively? The answer lies in route planning software. 

A route planning software sequences the routes and considers various real-world constraints to generate cost-efficient routes. It helps dispatchers assign the orders and generate optimal routes to the riders based on multiple factors like vehicle capacity, driver skill sets, tribal knowledge, driver availability, Hours of Service (HOS), and break timings. These optimal routes enable drivers to deliver the orders to the customers at the right time, like a touchdown. Also, it allows the drivers to complete their tasks before the anticipated time and spend more time with their loved ones. 

Read Also: The Definitive Guide To Logistics Route Optimization

2. Seek Feedback to Get Better – Bring in the Power of Advanced Analytics

All players love to receive feedback on how they played that particular or past game. But legendary players actively seek feedback and know there is always room for improvement. Tom Brady is no exception to this! 

Tom Brady monitors previous match videos rigorously to find out where he made the right and wrong decisions regarding footwork, reading a defense, or a throw. He doesn’t keep it to himself and ensures every team member is updated on their game plans and weak spots. He collects every ounce of data and expands on it to find out what more he could do as a player or team to win a game. 

Data is the quantitative mirror of how an organization or a team performed during a period. When dispatchers utilize data, they can spot the inefficiencies or bottlenecks that lead to below-par delivery performance. 

Say, a delivery business finds out that there has been a 30% increase in complaints about delivery delays. The company must find out why before it gets bigger and loses customers. When dispatchers use a dispatch management platform, they can obtain various insights and analytics on delivery delays:

• What is the On-Time In-Full (OTIF) score in service areas that contributed to a 30% increase in delivery delays? 
• What is the First Attempted Delivery Rate (FADR) in those service areas?
• Has the Cost Per Mile (CPM) increased or decreased in service areas where most delays occurred?
• Have any route deviations happened to vehicles that accounted for high delivery delays?
• Did Time under the Roof contribute to delivery delays?
• What was the percentage of reattempted deliveries and their cost when delivery delays occurred? 
• Were there any miscommunications or real-time tracking issues in those delayed deliveries?
• What was the time slot where the majority of the delivery delays occurred? 
• Did the delivery delays occur during peak hours or non-peak hours? 

The dispatcher can get answers to these critical questions and decode the solution for this problem only with the help of data. When dispatchers use a dispatch management platform, they can get the answers to these critical questions in a few seconds to minutes. This helps them make operational, tactical, and strategic initiatives to reduce delivery delays and maximize the profitability of each delivery.  

Read Also: Unit Economics in the Last-Mile Delivery 

Like how Tom Brady guides his teammates on their blindspots, dispatchers must help drivers with their weaknesses. They must make their drivers understand the detailed game plan for making deliveries. This is where a business needs a driver companion app. 

 A driver companion app enables drivers to perfectly follow the delivery with detailed navigation and timely route instructions on reaching customers. It helps dispatchers keep drivers in the loop and quickly notify them if there is a change in the plan. This detailed and brilliant navigation guidance from the driver companion app acts as the playbook for each driver to ensure they make deliveries at the right time and win more customers. 

Read Also: In Focus: Retailers, Customer Delight is Tied to Exceptional Delivery Experiences

3. Tom Brady Has Lizard’s Eyes – Visibility Matters in Logistics

On asking what makes Tom Brady great, Trent Dilfer, a high-school football coach in Nashville, says that Tom Brady has lizard’s eyes. He goes on to explain that with Tom Brady’s sideline-to-sideline eyes, his left eye can be watching the left boundary and his right eye watching the right boundary at the same time. His helmet points forward even if he’s dropping back, and if we slow-motion it, we can find out that he’s throwing a timing route for the left sideline. 

Trent Dilfer says that Tom Brady has trained this field visibility in his quarterback nuances over time. This has put him in the league of greats in the history of the NFL. What’s more important about this visibility is where he locates the ball. If he throws a ball low, there is a reason behind why he throws it low. Most importantly, he didn’t throw many interceptions in his career, and even if he does, he will be forcing it in the safe spot. 

Every dispatcher wants this kind of end-to-end visibility in their logistics operations. How do we bring the visibility in logistics operations that Tom Brady brings into the field? By investing in  battle tested analytics and control tower solutions, businesses can get a 360-degree view of the logistics activities . It enables them to obtain predictive alerts on anomalies on the ground, hold instant communication between stakeholders and on-ground staff, and get actionable insights to bridge real-time gaps and achieve supply chain excellence. Most importantly, it enables businesses to manage their delivery exceptions and even predict them before it occurs. 

Like Tom Brady being actively aware of the field changes, an integrated control tower provides real-time alerts for unexpected route changes or geofence breaches. By dynamically re-optimizing routes, it accommodates road closures, last-minute requests, unplanned halts, or delays. This enables them to adapt their delivery game like Tom Brady quickly and course correct the logistics operations to keep SLA commitments. 

Read Also: Why is a supply chain control tower important for a modern logistics business?

Break Your Defensive Barriers in Route Planning Like Tom Brady With Locus’ Customer Experience and Dispatch Management Platform

As NFL fans, seeing how Tom Brady takes the game forward through his brilliant quarterback moves was always interesting. The constraints for quarterbacks to score touchdowns have increased with the use of more game videos and analytics. But despite all these, Tom Brady became the best quarterback. This was because his mind worked like a self-learning intelligent software that could counter opponents’ moves. So, we can call Tom Brady the Quarterback supercomputer! 

Dispatchers need to invest in a tech platform to help them plan routes without manual intervention. One of the world’s best and leading customer experience and dispatch management platforms is Locus. 

Locus is a real-world-ready customer experience and dispatch management platform that has been helping its clients globally to improve logistics efficiency. Its intelligent and flexible route planning, end-to-end visibility, and advanced analytical insights power up dispatch management for any business. Also, it’s easy for any company to integrate its existing systems with Locus. Its optimal routes minimize planning time, reduce the distance traveled, and maximize fleet utilization. Beyond improving work-life balance, saving business costs, and adding revenues to business, its optimal routes make logistics operations more sustainable than before! 

Are you looking to up your dispatching game like Tom Brady?

References:

https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2020-11-23/tom-brady-great-quarterback-buccaneers-patriots-nfl
https://www.nfl.com/news/tom-brady-retirement-23-seasons-in-nfl-buccaneers-patriots