News

Wickes Enhance Home Delivery Service Levels

November 2009

Wickes Enhance Home Delivery Service Levels and Reduce Operating Costs by £250,000 per year with VSc ePOD, Vehicle Tracking and Performance Management Solutions.

Wickes is one of the UK’s favourite home improvement retailers. As part of the Travis Perkins Group, its stores appeal to serious DIY customers who carry out more complex projects, and tradesmen who undertake general repairs, maintenance and improvement projects for households. These customers are more demanding in terms of service, quality and price. Wickes operate 195 stores across the UK, all offering a range of kitchens and bathrooms, which are sold through in-store showrooms supported by their Home Delivery operation.

Customer Service is Key

As a successful and growing business, Wickes recognised the need to introduce electronic, integrated operational systems in order to streamline the management of their Home Delivery process, as well as further enhance their customers’ experience in terms of being able to offer more specific, timed delivery slots and joined-up handling of doorstep delivery and queries more efficiently.

The original project focused on Electronic Proof of Delivery (ePOD) but was extended to include GPS tracking and vehicle telematics on the home delivery fleet Rob Ivers , General Manager of Wickes Home Delivery Network, was involved in selecting VSc Solutions:

“The final decision on supplier was based on site visits and pricing. The VSc ePOD solution did exactly what they said it would do. We have achieved major customer service enhancements from having instant, online access to customer delivery information and we can react more quickly and intelligently to customer queries. The tracking functionality means that we can also better manage customer delivery expectations and take pre-emptive action where necessary”.

Reduced Operating Costs and Improved Efficiency

Through a fleet of 60 vehicles and a national distribution network of 8 depots, Wickes makes some 150,000 deliveries per year and, at its peak, delivers a kitchen every 3 minutes.

The introduction of real time electronic proof of delivery at Wickes has resulted in a 20% cut in the number of claims for incomplete delivery due to a much higher level of information accuracy – previously they did not have sufficient information from point of delivery to be able to investigate claims effectively. ePOD from VSc manages the whole delivery and collection process, including scanning and exceptions, running on Motorola MC9000 series handheld mobile computers and Zebra handheld printers installed in all delivery vehicles.

Rob Ivers comments:

“The ePOD solution from VSc gave us the platform to be able to check claims, confident in the proof of delivery information received. In practical terms this has saved Wickes around £250,000 per year. Wickes handle over 3000 deliveries each week which, with our previous paper-based system, was an administration nightmare. The ePOD solution has transformed the way we handle claims or queries and also reduced the man-power required.”

Delivering Real Business Benefits

For Wickes, this has provided dramatic cost savings and, as importantly for them, established a platform to more effectively manage their business growth going forward through the integration and visibility of system information.

Rob Ivers explains:

“One of the benefits of working with VSc Solutions is that they really are a ‘one-stop shop’. It was great not to have to deal with multiple suppliers and integration teams. VSc’s CIS (Communications and Integration Server) provides complete business data integration and their ‘can-do’ attitude certainly helped us to achieve our business system goals.”

For the future, Wickes are considering how they may further streamline their business systems to provide self-service access to customer delivery information.

Rob Ivers concludes:

“The functionality provided by the integrated ePOD and tracking systems from VSc Solutions means that we can now actively explore the next steps in developing our business systems to provide the ultimate in customer service.”