SUMMARY
Nationex is a Canadian transportation and delivery company with a fleet of 500 trucks that has been in business for over 45 years. It stands out for its commitment to sustainable development and is the first transportation company in Canada to obtain B Corp certification.
With its old optimization solution, Nationex faced problems with flexibility, address accuracy, and slow route calculation. These limitations threatened its operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.
In collaboration with Korem and HERE Technologies, Nationex implemented a modern and flexible route optimization platform. This solution increases efficiency, reduces geolocation errors, and supports its growth objectives.
Objective: Geocode customer addresses, organize packages in transit, and optimize the order of stops
The Client
Industry: Transportation and Logistics
Employees: 500+
Founded: 1980
Location: Quebec
Nationex is a 100% Quebec-owned family-run transportation and delivery company that has been in business for over 45 years. It stands out for its local roots and strong commitment to sustainability. In 2025, Nationex became the first transportation company in Canada to obtain B Corp certification, confirming its shift toward responsible and innovative practices.
The company has 20 depots and three automated sorting centers in Quebec and Ontario. Its fleet of more than 500 trucks delivers nearly 10 million packages per year. Two years after launching its electrification plan, Nationex has already delivered more than 3.4 million packages using electric vehicles, thanks to the integration of electric trucks and bicycles in major urban centers.
The Challenge
Before working with Korem, Nationex had been using a third-party route optimization solution for several years. Although it met the company’s initial needs, this platform showed its limitations as the company’s activities grew. Its lack of flexibility prevented the efficient redistribution of routes based on actual available resources, making planning laborious and inflexible.
Geographic accuracy was also a major challenge. Addresses were often incorrectly corrected and GPS coordinates (longitude and latitude) were inaccurate, making it difficult to create reliable routes and resulting in package delays.
Added to this were particularly long optimization times, sometimes three to four times longer than they should have been, which directly reduced productivity and complicated the daily management of operations.
The solution
The project began with a proof of concept (POC), which allowed Nationex to quickly see the value of HERE Technologies and the expertise of the Korem team. Convinced by the results, the company chose to develop its own internal platform using the following HERE APIs:
This new solution offers increased flexibility, allowing routes to be created and dynamically reassigned based on available resources. For example, if two drivers are absent, Nationex can quickly transform eight planned routes into just six, without losing efficiency.
The integration of these APIs aims to improve geocoding quality, while optimizing routes by taking real-time traffic into account. The goal is to make operations smoother and ensure more reliable delivery on the first attempt, while allowing flexibility/customization for dispatchers.
Beyond performance, HERE’s pricing model, based on the number of trucks rather than transaction volume, makes the solution much more cost-effective than the previous one. This strategy allows Nationex to increase its efficiency while keeping control of its costs as its fleet grows and its operations become more complex.
From the very beginning, Korem truly understood what Nationex does and quickly identified our needs. They presented us with several solution options, ones we likely wouldn’t have identify on our own. With Korem, it’s not about selling a product just for the sake of it; it’s about finding the right solution that genuinely fits our business.
The Results
The implementation of HERE APIs has transformed Nationex’s operational efficiency. The time required to optimize routes has been reduced by more than two-thirds, allowing drivers to spend less time at the depot and more time on the road.
Increased accuracy in address correction improves delivery quality on the first attempt, reducing returns and increasing customer satisfaction. These gains translate directly into an increase in the number of packages delivered per day and a decrease in operating costs, generating significant savings across a fleet of more than 500 vehicles.
In addition, the migration was seamless, with the old and new platforms running simultaneously until the transition to the optimized solution was complete.
Korem service used by Nationex
MANAGEMENT CONSULTING
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This allows us to approach technology challenges from both a business and geospatial perspective so that we can recommend a strategy that addresses your key pain points.
