It's important to have fulfilment and delivery visible in one place

Diamond has invested in its own logistics management platform, Despatchlab, to manage all its fulfilment and delivery through one technology platform. Despatchlab has cost Diamond over £3million to develop over the last five years. By investing that time and money, it gave our network partners and our clients the one stop logistic platform in order to exponentially improve their fulfilment and delivery function.

Why is it important to have fulfilment and delivery on one easy to use platform?

Let us illustrate this via a case story from our CEO, Kate Lester: I went to go and see a client a few years ago now. They were using between 25 to 30 different carriers because their products were a variety of sizes, going to a variety of destinations around the UK as well as the rest of the world. They did need to send some items by post, some items were going via normal UK overnight service and some were being sent globally. There was also a need for specialist carriers for specific parts of the world. For example, some carriers are stronger in Europe, and other carriers are stronger in Africa. When I visited the warehouse, they had five PCs lined up alongside each other, shared by eight people, in order to input the consignment into a variety of carrier systems. The challenges they had with this set up were numerous, but the core ones were:

• Somebody had to know which carrier was best, for what goods, and what destination.
• A lot of knowledge was sitting with one person. What happened if this one person was ill? This made it quite a business continuity risk.
• The pricing wasn't transparent. The accounts team had to wait to date the billing retrospectively, because the carriers didn't show the price of the consignment on their website.
• It was nearly impossible to track the consignments. The teams were having to dive between the carriers that did have tracking systems (and not all of them did, so that would then be a phone call) with warehouse people frantically dashing between different websites. This resulted in a very labour intensive process.

Implementing multi-carrier technology that just works

Ultimately speaking by introducing Despatchlab, every single one of those problems was resolved. Our system sets algorithms automatically that helps to route the consignments based on the best route and the best pricing. This can even be set up according to each customer preference. This better supports the teams delivering these roles and isn't reliant on one persons knowledge; the system does it for you. Firstly, we make sure we set it up according to how you want it mapped, i.e. if you wanted to use DHL for Africa for example, then you can rest assured that the system defaults are going to be correct. Secondly, we integrate with all the major carriers so therefore you've got one source to keep an eye on all your deliveries. Again, the Diamond ethos is to proactively manage exceptions. We work closely with you to make sure it is set up for your business - you don't have to do anything, we do it for you and tailor the platform for your business so that you can see where all your consignments are in one place. This can give you reassurance that goods are being delivered in line with your final customers expectations. We make sure that we're doing our job! Thirdly, Despatchlab shows live prices based on the tariffs that you've agreed. Now there is an exception to this . . . if you're telling porky pies about the size of the consignments that are inputted into Despatchlab, the surcharges will be applied retrospectively! But as long as you are accurate in terms of the dimensions and weights of your consignments, then you can rest assure that the price that you see on your system on the day of booking is the price that it's going to be. That keeps your finance teams sweet. Finally, because of the efficiency of the system, you can save your business time and money. Whether it's reductions in headcount or the redeployment of people into more income generating job roles, you will not need as many people managing your logistics. Despatchlab exponentially increases the productivity of your dispatch team. Despatchlab really is the future of meeting your mixed logistics business needs. For more information see despatchlab.com. However, if you'd like more information on our technology and how it can support your business, our team can be contacted on 0333 567 5888. Alternatively, email us at sales@diamondlogistics.co.uk or complete our contact form below.