Technology-driven advances allow businesses to offer their customers greater service levels than ever before, but it can also mean there are also new obstacles and challenges to overcome. This is particularly true in the fast-paced world of palletised freight, where getting the right goods delivered to the right place at the right time can be a full-time job in itself.

Jenny O’Brien, Head of Fulfilment at Palletways UK, knows the problem only too well and says that businesses are increasingly concluding that it is no longer possible, or even desirable, to try and manage everything in house.

She said: “By going it alone, businesses may need to find more space to cope with seasonal demands, while also having to employ more staff to get the work done and this is often not a good use of either time or resources.

“Every client has their own unique needs and requirements but usually they all want help with three main issues; the need to save time, money and space. With this in mind, many companies are looking for ways to outsource their logistics needs to specialist business partners to allow them to concentrate on their core business instead.

“That is why more and more businesses are turning to specialist business partners such as Palletways UK to fulfil that role for them so that they free up valuable resources to spend on running and developing their own businesses.”

Drawing on her nineteen years’ experience at Palletways UK, Jenny has identified five key areas where businesses can benefit from partnering with Palletways Fulfilment:

• Next day delivery with late cut-off order times:

Palletways Fulfilment is located at our Fradley hub and offers direct access to the Palletways network, allows for reduced trunking costs from external warehouses and gives later cut-off times due to reduced travel time for goods into the hub.

• Last-mile delivery solutions:

An offsite warehouse may not be able to offer the last leg of delivery, but our location means we can insert directly in to our Palletways network via our main Fradley hub, with no extra work for the client, resulting in time savings that the client can direct elsewhere.

• Integrated systems:

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) links, available directly from the client’s website, allows orders to be dropped into the Warehouse Management System (WMS) at Palletways, day or night, without the client having to manually enter any details. This saves time, provides an excellent end user service level and allows for full traceability of stock, orders and despatches on a WMS portal.

• Adaptable storage space:

An average business profile may change over time or require additional services, and our bespoke solutions, all accessed from one account, has multiple options including racking storage, bulk storage, container offload, palletised picking and cross dock activity.

• Pay only for used space:

Rather than paying for a fixed storage space or larger premises, clients only pay for the storage they need, offering cost savings compared to owning and running their own warehouse. Clients find this particularly useful when they see seasonal demand or changes in buyer behaviour.

Jenny added: “We find that many clients don’t want the hassle of dealing with pallet movements but don’t want to compromise on offering a streamlined customer service, and this is where Palletways Fulfilment comes in.

“We take care of every aspect of fulfilment so that the client can free up time and resources to get on with running their own business.”

Global info-logistics provider cargo-partner has been outsourcing many of their fulfilment services to Palletways for the past year to improve efficiency while maintaining the highest levels of customer service.

Cargo-partner uses Palletways Fulfilment to receive, store, order pick and send out goods on behalf of its clients and says the flexibility, cost effectiveness and service performance were the key benefits they received.

Managing Director Ireland Fergal Keenan said: “Both the industry and the demands from clients are ever changing which is why it is vital to have the flexibility to deal with the challenges that this brings.

“The simple integration of our technology on the front end and the Palletways technology at the back end ensures the entire process is totally streamlined so that we can find the right solution for our clients with full confidence that orders go out in time.

“This is a great example of how technology can be used to manage a process on a remote basis while taking away a whole layer of cost and complexity that we would otherwise have to deal with ourselves.”