Customer story: Wincanton
Driven by customer satisfaction and innovation, Wincanton needed a partner to help grow their fulfilment tech offering. We chat to Paul Durkin, Managing Director of Digital and eFulfilment at Wincanton, about how they did it.
Wincanton is the largest British 3PL, providing supply chain consultancy, solutions and operations for global retailers and brands. With over 200 sites, a distribution fleet of over 3,500 and 14 million square feet of warehousing space, Wincanton lead fulfilment and logistics for household names such as Asda, British Sugar and Heinz.
The challenges:
- Expanding delivery management offering
- Strengthening final mile tech roadmap
- Adding extra value to fast-growth retailers
Improving propositions
What was the driver for partnering with Sorted?
With warehousing, fulfilment, logistics and distribution nailed, Wincanton are constantly innovating to ensure their customer experience is optimised and market-leading.
Back in 2017, the team recognised that there was an opportunity to bolster their offering. They needed new tech to transform carrier management and post-purchase solutions for their customers – which would open up a new stream of revenue, whilst solving customer challenges.
“Our need for Sorted was very much driven by customer need,” says Paul Durkin, Managing Director of Digital and eFulfilment at Wincanton. “We’re always listening to our customers’ pain points – and a competitive final mile is increasingly becoming something that keeps retailers up at night.”
After an extensive search and evaluation process, Wincanton decided to enter a partnership with Sorted. Sorted’s impressive growth rate, fast-moving innovation and commitment to transforming delivery experience matched the Wincanton approach perfectly, and it was the focus and expertise of Sorted’s people that really sealed the deal for the partnership.
“The people at Sorted bring the product to life. Their lens on the retail tech sector allows us to learn from their final mile and CX experience, especially when we’re looking at developing solutions for our customers. We’re both focussed around finding ways through challenges, and it’s definitely keeping our thinking fresh.”
“The idea behind us using the Sorted platform is simple; it’s the exciting application of new technology. We want to add as much value to our customer proposition as possible.”
The people at Sorted bring the product to life. Their lens on the retail tech sector allows us to learn from their final mile and CX experience.
Paul Durkin,
Managing Director of Digital and eFulfilment
What Sorted solution did they use?
Wincanton’s clients benefit from Sorted’s delivery experience platform and can make use of.
Ship
Offer personalised delivery options to optimise your online checkout, increase basket conversion and drive acquisition.
Access multiple carriers through a single integration, save cost through shipping rules and generate carrier compatible labels – all whilst meeting your customer promise.
Track
Automate tracking and post-purchase communications to reduce customer contacts, increase brand engagement and boost CSAT and NPS.
Growing the solution together
So, what does the partnership mean for retailers and brands?
Part of Wincanton’s fully managed service sees leading retailers and brands outsource their shipping programme to the firm, meaning carrier relationships are managed on the retailer’s behalf. A number of Wincanton’s clients (including Homebase and Husqvarna) use Ship to make delivery management operations fully connected and totally smooth.
Paul says that, regardless of maturity, retailers and brands see a big difference in the efficiency of their delivery management – and, of course, the impact of that on their customers.
“We sometimes see customers coming to us with underdeveloped, or non-existing, delivery processes. This means they often see significant differences, fast. Other times, our customers have a strong delivery operation already, and our job is to optimise and activate the huge amount of growth potential that we see.”
And the biggest benefit of the partnership? Agility. The combination of a logistics powerhouse like Wincanton and a fast-growth SaaS company like Sorted means the frictionless mobilisation of solutions in fast-changing environments.
In one recent example, Sorted and Wincanton worked on a high-profile project for a non-retailer with complex requirements. Not the usual technology application, but the urgency of the programme and the flexibility of the partnership meant that an end-to-end delivery solution was implemented and supported the delivering of millions of shipments within just a couple of weeks.
Together, we’re making it even easier for customers to deploy, reduce implementation costs by up to two thirds and establish a flexible usage set-up that’s more transactionally priced.
Paul Durkin,
Managing Director of Digital and eFulfilment
Looking forward
What does the future hold for the partnership?
Big things, according to Paul.
“This is very much the start of the journey… although you wouldn’t think it when you look at how much we’ve already achieved.”
Wincanton’s cloud e-fulfilment solution is set to grow even further, with Sorted front and centre of the offering.
“Together, we’re making it even easier for customers to deploy, reduce implementation costs by up to two thirds and establish a flexible usage set-up that’s more transactionally priced. High-growth retailers need to react quickly, and that’s what we’re helping them do.”