How Covetrus cut delivery delays by 87% with RouteMagic ePOD
A $12 bn global animal-health distributor running 200+ next-day deliveries a day out of Limerick — now with real-time visibility, digital proof of delivery, and zero paper tracking.
- 87% fewer delivery delays
- 200+ deliveries per day
- 20+ routes managed daily
- 25 vans tracked live
Inside Covetrus Ireland.
Covetrus is a global animal-health, dental, and medical distribution business with a $12 bn group turnover, 5,000 employees, and operations across 26 countries. The Ireland division — headquartered in Annacotty, Limerick — supplies veterinary clinics across the country on a next-day delivery promise, fulfilled from two warehouses totalling more than 52,000 sq ft and a fleet of 25 vans running 20+ routes a day.
Paper-based tracking couldn’t keep up with next-day delivery.
As volumes grew, the manual delivery operation became the bottleneck — with no real-time visibility and no standardised proof of delivery to rely on.
Before RouteMagic, Covetrus Ireland ran its delivery operation on paper sheets and manual data entry. Drivers carried printed run-sheets, dispatchers updated spreadsheets by hand, and proof of delivery came back to the depot as signed paper dockets — sometimes days after the goods were dropped.
For a business committed to next-day delivery of animal-health products to veterinary clinics, that gap between dispatch and confirmation was costly. Errors and duplications crept in at every keystroke, dispatchers couldn’t see where vans were in real time, and customer-service calls about late or missing deliveries were impossible to answer without phoning the driver.
- Manual, paper-based record-keeping — errors and duplication on every run.
- No real-time visibility of vehicle location or delivery status.
- No standardised proof of delivery — signatures, photos, and exceptions all captured ad hoc.
- Inefficient communication between drivers, dispatchers, and customers.
RouteMagic ePOD, Route Monitor, and live GPS tracking — deployed across the fleet.
Covetrus Ireland switched the entire delivery operation from paper to RouteMagic, equipping every van with the driver app and the back-office team with live Route Monitor.
Every Covetrus van is now equipped with the RouteMagic driver app. Routes are built in the Back-Office, dispatched directly to the driver, and tracked live by the operations team from the moment the van leaves the depot.
At each stop, the driver captures the electronic proof of delivery in seconds — signature, photographs of the goods on site, notes for the clinic — and the back-office team sees it the instant it lands. Geo-fenced arrivals automatically confirm visits, customer notifications fire as soon as a delivery is completed, and any exception — failed drop, missing item, signature mismatch — is flagged on the Route Monitor map for the dispatcher to act on immediately.
- RouteMagic ePOD with electronic signature and image capture at every stop.
- GPS tracking of all 25 vans, with live positions on the Route Monitor map.
- Real-time delivery status updates flowing straight back to the office.
- Automated customer notifications — no more “where’s my order?” calls.
- Geo-fenced visit confirmation and exception alerts for failed or out-of-window stops.
An 87% reduction in delivery delays — and a fully paperless POD trail.
With live visibility and digital proof in place, Covetrus tightened its next-day delivery promise and lifted customer satisfaction at the same time.
The single biggest shift has been on delays. With routes optimised and exceptions flagged the moment they happen, Covetrus Ireland has cut delivery delays by 87% — protecting its next-day delivery commitment to veterinary clinics across the country.
Just as importantly, every one of the 200+ daily deliveries is now validated in real time and verified to the correct location. Customers receive automatic notifications when their order is on its way and again on completion, and the back-office team has a full digital audit trail in place of paper dockets — signatures, photos, timestamps, and geo-fenced confirmations, all searchable from the Back-Office.
| Outcome | Before RouteMagic | With RouteMagic |
|---|---|---|
| Delivery delays | Frequent, hard to predict | 87% reduction |
| Proof of delivery | Paper dockets, returned end-of-day | Digital signature + photos, captured in real time |
| Vehicle visibility | Phone calls to drivers | Live GPS on Route Monitor for all 25 vans |
| Customer notifications | Manual or none | Automatic, fired on dispatch and delivery |
| Audit trail | Paper sheets, manual filing | Searchable digital trail across every stop |
| Exception handling | Discovered after the fact | Flagged live on the Route Monitor map |
Switching to RouteMagic moved our delivery operation off paper and onto a live map. We see every van, capture proof at every stop, and our customers know exactly when their order is arriving — that’s what cut our delivery delays by 87%.
The RouteMagic modules powering Covetrus.
A connected stack — planning, driver app, live monitoring, and digital proof — all on one platform.
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