Dispatch Strategies are a means by which your deliveries get assigned to providers based on the preferences you define. They allow you to decide how your deliveries get assigned, to whom, and when/if your deliveries get auto-reassigned. Nash uses dispatch strategies to ensure that your orders are delivered in the most timely and cost-effective way, and ideally, to automate as many aspects of your delivery workflow as possible.

To reach the Dispatch Strategy settings page, follow these steps:

Inside the dispatch strategy you will find a variety of information and options, but we'll focus on a few key pieces that make up the default dispatch strategy.

Jobs that are assigned via auto-dispatch are assigned to a delivery provider based on one of three selection strategies:

The first function provided by dispatch strategies is the ability to filter all of the providers you work with down to only those that should be eligible to deliver a particular order. You may have dispatch strategies for different geographic locations, which are served by different providers. Or you may have them for different workflows, high package value vs. low package value, for example. By using multiple Dispatch Strategies together you are able to create a comprehensive delivery workflow.

Adding and subtracting allowed providers allows you to limit the number of delivery providers available to for a particular delivery. Through this list, you can add (or remove) any provider that is currently enabled for your account. This ensures that, when creating a delivery with that dispatch strategy, only the providers you chose will show as availabile for that delivery.

Enabling this setting, and setting a maximum fee, puts an upper limit on the delivery fee that can be automatically incurred. When no provider is found under the Maximum Delivery Fee, Nash will not Auto Dispatch the delivery. Deliveries that are impacted by this setting can still be manually dispatched via the Job Details page.

This setting applies to both an initial Auto-Dispatch as well as any Auto Reassignment that may be attempted.

When the Auto Dispatch toggle is enabled, a job will be matched with a delivery provider as soon as it enters the Nash portal. This means that a delivery will be dispatched to a delivery provider almost immediately. In most cases, this is the preferred method of dispatch. The delivery provider each job gets dispatched to is determined by the Selection Strategy setting described below.

Enabling package requirements at the Dispatch Strategy level will ensure that all deliveries with this strategy will have a minimum set of package requirements. In the even that a particular delivery is created with more package requirements than is set on the Dispatch Strategy, the most restrictive set is applied.

Enabling a minimum vehicle requirement at the Dispatch Strategy level will ensure that the appropriate sized vehicle is always requested from the provider. For example, a Dispatch Strategy designed for big and bulky items could be set to have a minimum vehicle size of a pickup truck.

One of the most important features of Nash is the ability to re-assign a delivery to a different provider, should the first provider fail, ensuring your delivery is completed. Re-assignment could be done manually, but by utilizing a dispatch strategy and enabling Auto Reassign on Failure, Nash will take care of this automatically on your behalf.

The first scenario that auto reassign can engage is upon provider failure. When this occurs, the delivery transitions to the next provider in the selection strategy. For example, a price-based strategy will select the next lowest-priced provider.

Nash will attempt to Auto Reassign on Failure a maximum of two times. Should all three providers fail, you will need to manually assign to another provider or handle the delivery outside of Nash.

Utilizing the Different Dispatch Strategy on Failure toggle allows you to send reassignments caused by failure to a different Dispatch Strategy. This could be for many reasons, but the most common reason is that the original set of providers has a specified amount of lead time they need before pickup time. If this is the case and the original provider fails, triggering a reassignment, you would want to utilize a Dispatch Strategy this is filled with on demand providers.

Adding a time constraint will only switch the dispatch strategy assigned to the delivery if the failure is within the specified amount time until pickup time. In the example above, you might set the time constraint to 60 minutes. Doing so would change to a different Dispatch Strategy only if the original provider fails the delivery 60 minutes or less before pickup time. Otherwise it would stay in the original Dispatch Strategy.

The second scenario that auto reassign can engage is if a provider is taking too long to assign a driver. In this instance, Nash will automatically dispatch the delivery to the next provider in the selection strategy without canceling the first. As soon as one of the providers assigns a driver to the delivery, Nash will cancel the request with the other provider. By engaging a second provider Nash ensures that your delivery is completed as quickly as possible.

Nash will only attempt to Auto Reassign on Time once. It is possible to manually dispatch more providers, but you will be responsible for canceling the unnecessary fleets manually.

When this setting is enabled, you are able to use a different dispatch strategy when a delivery is automatically reassigned due to time. This can be useful when the initial dispatch strategy is not well suited for dispatching providers with little to no lead time.

A few important items should be considered when enabling auto reassign on your dispatch strategy: