Logistics North East expands business with NetDespatch shipping technology
17 December 2007

Logistics North East, recently voted the sixth fastest growing company in North East England, has seen its business grow with the help of Internet innovation from NetDespatch. Since using NetDespatch's Velocity Connector shipper integration product, this overnight parcel and pallet delivery service has tripled its business with one of its major clients: Hillarys Blinds. Velocity Connector enables Hillarys despatch systems to automatically send collection and delivery information to the NetDespatch web servers, for processing by the Velocity shipping and tracking system, as well as automatically printing the correct bar-code labels for Logistics North East at point of despatch.

"Hillarys is an extremely important client for us and Velocity Connector has helped forge and reinforce our relationship with the UK's leading blind manufacturer. The system has enabled us to integrate Hillarys' SAP system, bar-code label printing, traceability from sales order through production, and online booking and tracking. The integration is the vital link in the process that enables an extremely efficient operation," says Simon Bradley, IT Manager, Logistics North East.

Hillarys is the leading made-to-measure blinds specialist in the UK with a turnover in excess of £90 million. Each week the company processes over 6000 orders and makes nearly 30,000 blinds. Logistics North East picks up about 800 blinds a day which are delivered the next day to both business and residential households via the APC Overnight network. With this level of throughput, a reliable system and accurate booking and shipping details are essential.

According to Simon Bradley: "We have been using NetDespatch's Velocity on-line shipping and tracking platform for some time, but implementing Velocity Connector at Hillarys has meant that we have eliminated all human-generated errors with immediate effect because it eradicates the need for re-entering information. Delivery information is entered just once during the sales order process and then Connector passes it on to the other IT applications. The integration is 100 per cent effective and allows Hillarys' sales department to simply scan the bar code on the sales order to initiate the fulfillment, labelling and booking processes. All of this goes on in the background with Velocity Connector underpinning a highly efficient end-to-end process."

With Velocity Connector integrating and automating Hillarys customer ordering and shipping activity, Logistics North East has tripled its business with the blind manufacturer.

"We are very pleased with Velocity Connector. It extends the functionality of NetDespatch's online booking and tracking solution, which in turn boosts efficiency levels. So much so that Hillarys has shown its appreciation by giving us more work," says Simon Bradley.

"Throughout the deployment and beyond, NetDespatch have proven to be extremely helpful and responsive. It is a 10 out of 10 service," concludes Simon Bradley.