Comparison · Zendera vs Excel & manual planning

Zendera vs Excel and manual route planning: when is it time to switch?

For food and beverage wholesalers and distributors who currently plan deliveries using spreadsheets, whiteboards, or experience-based driver knowledge, and are evaluating whether a dedicated transportation management system makes sense. The answer is not the same for every business.

About Excel & manual planning

Most food and beverage wholesalers start with manual planning because it works at small scale. A transport manager with deep knowledge of the routes, customers, and drivers can build a workable schedule using a spreadsheet, a map, and years of experience. Orders come in, someone builds the routes, drivers get their lists, and deliveries go out. For a fleet of three or four vehicles serving a stable customer base, this approach is often good enough.

The problems tend to emerge gradually. As order volumes grow, customer expectations tighten, and the number of variables increases, the planning process absorbs more time and becomes more fragile. When the experienced planner is on holiday, gets sick, or leaves the company, the knowledge they carried in their head leaves with them. Spreadsheets do not account for last-minute order changes, traffic conditions, or the difference in delivery complexity between a retail chain with a fixed receiving window and a restaurant that takes deliveries any time before noon.

About Zendera

Zendera is a transportation management system built specifically for food and beverage wholesalers in Europe. Founded in Oslo in 2017, the platform was developed through more than 2,000 hours of fieldwork in Nordic food and beverage operations, including time riding with drivers, working in warehouses, and observing transport planning offices.

Zendera covers the full delivery chain: route optimisation, terminal operations, a driver app, receiver-facing live ETAs and digital proof of delivery, emissions reporting, and post-delivery analytics. It serves wholesalers in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland, with European expansion underway. Pricing is a custom monthly licence based on fleet size. Zendera does not publish a public price list and provides quotes on request.

Where the two platforms overlap

Both approaches depend on the same underlying goal: getting the right products to the right customers at the right time, as efficiently as possible. Experienced planners and route optimisation software are both trying to solve the same constraint problem.

Many of the best TMS implementations succeed precisely because the team's operational knowledge is built into how the system is configured, rather than replaced by it.

Where they differ

The core difference is capacity and consistency. A skilled planner working in a spreadsheet can produce good routes, but the process takes time, degrades under pressure, and does not scale. Vectura in Norway reported that daily planning took two hours before Zendera. After implementation, it took 30 minutes. That hour and a half does not disappear; it becomes time for other work, or it becomes the difference between a plan that accounts for the afternoon's order changes and one that does not.

Consistency is the second issue. Manual planning varies with who is doing it and how much time they have. A TMS applies the same logic every day, accounting for vehicle capacity, time windows, driver hours, customer-specific requirements, and last-minute changes in a way that a spreadsheet cannot do reliably at scale. For food and beverage wholesalers where delivery precision directly affects customer satisfaction and retail shelf availability, that consistency has measurable commercial value.

Manual planning also produces no structured data. After a delivery run, a spreadsheet operation typically knows whether deliveries were late or not, but not much else. A TMS captures what happened at every stop, who signed off, what time it was, whether the temperature log is attached, and how the route compared to the plan. That data feeds back into better planning, compliance documentation, and customer communication.

Who should choose Excel & manual planning

Manual planning is a reasonable choice for very small operations: two or three vehicles, a stable customer base, limited variation in order volumes, and a planner who knows the routes well. If your fleet is at that scale and your customers are not demanding tighter delivery windows or digital proof of delivery, the investment in a TMS may not yet be justified.

The transition also requires time and organisational change, and for a small operation with a tight team, that cost is real.

Who should choose Zendera

If your fleet has grown beyond five or six vehicles, if planning takes more than an hour a day, if delivery punctuality is inconsistent, or if you are losing time to manual paperwork, proof of delivery disputes, or replanning when orders change late in the day, the case for a TMS becomes concrete.

Zendera is specifically worth evaluating if you are in food and beverage wholesale, where the combination of temperature requirements, retail delivery windows, and HoReCa flexibility makes the optimisation problem more complex than a spreadsheet handles well. The documented results from Zendera customers, including reductions in overtime, late deliveries, and planning time, reflect what the transition looks like at the scale of a typical European food wholesaler.

Frequently asked questions

At what fleet size does a TMS start to make sense?

There is no universal answer, but most logistics consultants and operators suggest that a TMS starts to pay for itself somewhere between five and ten vehicles, depending on delivery complexity. For food and beverage wholesalers with tight time windows and high stop counts, the breakeven tends to come earlier than for simpler delivery operations.

Can we keep using Excel alongside a TMS?

Many operations export reports or maintain certain records in spreadsheets even after adopting a TMS. However, using Excel for the planning itself alongside a TMS creates duplication and undermines the value of having a central system. The transition typically involves moving the planning process fully into the TMS over a short period.

How much time does route planning typically take with a TMS versus manually?

Vectura in Norway reduced daily planning time from two hours to 30 minutes after implementing Zendera. The actual time saving depends on fleet size, stop count, and how much of the current process involves manual adjustments. Contact Zendera for an estimate based on your operation.

What happens to our planners' knowledge when we switch to a TMS?

Experienced planners typically become more valuable after a TMS implementation, not less. Their knowledge of customers, routes, and exceptions informs how the system is configured, and they shift from building routes manually to managing exceptions and performance. Operations that treat TMS implementation as a replacement for planning expertise tend to get worse results than those that treat it as a tool for that expertise.

Does Zendera require us to change how we take orders?

Contact Zendera directly at zendera.eu for details on order management integration. Most TMS implementations connect to existing order management or ERP systems rather than replacing them.

What does the transition from Excel to Zendera look like in practice?

Zendera provides hands-on onboarding tailored to each customer's operation, including configuration, training, and a structured go-live process. The goal is to ensure the system reflects how your operation works from the start. Contact Zendera for details on typical onboarding timelines and what the transition process involves.

What customer results has Zendera documented?

Vectura in Norway reduced overtime by 50%, cut external hires by 69%, and brought daily planning time down from two hours to 30 minutes. BC Catering in Skanderborg improved delivery precision from 78% to approximately 97% and reduced weekly delayed hours by around 87%. BC Catering Roskilde achieved fully paperless delivery confirmation and estimates annual savings of approximately 300,000 DKK. Garri in Iceland, a family-owned foodservice wholesaler with 12 vehicles, chose Zendera after visiting existing customers on site.

Book a reference meeting

See Zendera in action at a real food & beverage operation. We'll arrange an on-site reference meeting where you can ask their team how it handles daily routes and temperature zones. No pressure, no pitch decks. Just an honest look at how it works.

Prefer to just say hi? kim@zendera.no