A day in the life of a Diamond Network Partner is never boring! From the moment the front door is unlocked to 10 hours later when the front door is closed, it’s a packed schedule and time flies. It’s never dull, always busy and always interesting.
A different opportunity for couriers
It is really different though from other network opportunities. We are not classic delivery service providers like an APC depot or an Amazon DSP. We don’t have to run trunk vehicles, we don’t have to run a big fleet of our own vehicles delivering multi drops during the day. We focus on collecting from say, 200 clients in the local area, and working with say, 50 fulfilment clients, per site. So that means you have really personal relationships, which helps maintain long-term relationships and guarantee of work, with each individual client.
Making it easier, to deliver customer service
Our business is very technology led. We have invested time, logistics knowledge and money into our delivery and fulfilment platform, Despatchlab, which is at the heart of everything we do. Early on, we realised that in terms of our business model, that it wasn’t the deliveries that went well that we ended up managing, it was the deliveries that didn’t go right which needed our attention most. Therefore, we built a system that tells us when this happens, and we start the day looking at and rectifying, the exceptions to find out why things haven’t been delivered and a solution. This could be because the addressee wasn’t home or an item has been stuck in customs or a carrier error. This proactive exception management means we know that stuff’s gone wrong before our clients’ customer do. We work on mitigating the outcome of that as our primary function.
Once we sorted the exceptions we move on to the day-to-day control of same day movements, the managing of the fulfilment teams and the picking packing and dispatching of all our e-commerce goods. With over 30 warehouses around the UK presently and a further 20 due to open next year the warehouse’s vary from 100,000 square foot to an average of about 10,000 square foot per site. Which means we’ve got collectively about 500k square foot of storage in the UK. Our focus is on fulfilment and delivery whether that is on the same day or overnight basis. A lot of our daily function is picking goods from stock and facilitating its delivery either by same day Courier or in putting into one of the overnight carriers such as DPD or DHL.
Investing in sales and business development
Sales and business development is very important to any Diamond Logistics network partnership. You do not invest in a partnership, open the back doors of your van, and expect parcels to fly in! It really is about you establishing your own business relationships with your local customers, and helping them to build their businesses, as well as you building yours. Sometimes that can be a cultural change for delivery service providers because they have been literally handed work by the major carriers such as Amazon. However, we do already have successful DSPs in the network. It’s through proactive business development that our Network Partners thrive. Everyday there is sales and marketing activity in every site around the UK.
Utilising technology to do the work
In the afternoon all the fulfilled consignments that are going on into the overnight network should be ready for the multiple carriers to collect form our warehouses, and some carriers we drop into. Once the consignment’s manifested are on their way through the carrier networks, Despatchlab does all the hard work and monitors the consignments throughout to final proof of delivery.
Days can be shorter without sacrificing income
Towards the end of the day you tidy up all the proof of deliveries and ensure all your same day couriers are home safe and allocate any work for the next morning. Most sites (service centres) typically close their doors by 6.00pm.
Because we don’t have to run any trunks to hubs in the Midlands, we don’t have to open at 4.00am in the morning and close at 10.00pm at night. Primarily our business works Monday to Friday 8.00am till 6.00pm. We know that weekends are important, whether you have a family or not, so aside from peak, we barely work at the weekends. It’s a quality of life rarely seen in the logistics industry . . . life is not all about work!
Our business model is completely different from classic logistics businesses. The mixture of fulfilment, same day and overnight delivery, backed with our unique software Despatchlab and a service delivery model that turns classic logistics methods on the head, is radical and it works.
We have seen a number of SME logistics businesses enjoy a different way of working and better life balance, by using our methodology.
If you’d like to find out how our network partnership could revolutionise your operations get in touch. Our team can be contacted on 0333 567 5888. Alternatively, email us at npsales@diamondlogistics.co.uk or complete our contact form below.
