Podfather has introduced route planning, automated vehicle checks, delivery tracking, customer notification and ePOD to this operation which sees vehicles making timed deliveries to academic, healthcare and research facilitates across the country. With Podfather in place, the SLS team has real-time visibility and accurate end-of-day reporting for all its vehicle movements.
From pipettes and Petri dishes to the latest in laboratory instrumentation, Scientific Laboratory Supplies prides itself on providing quality products and great service to its. With deliveries being made using a mix of its own fleet, and third-party couriers, the SLS team saw the need to move away from the paper-based systems of the past. Having reviewed a selection of systems that the market had to offer SLS selected Podfather based on the system's intuitive back office planning system, ease of integration and proven results.
“Before we introduced Podfather we were manually planning and managing our distribution operation using spreadsheets and paper tickets,” comments Bruce Mowbray, Operations Director at Scientific Laboratory Supplies. “Now we can seamlessly upload jobs from our warehouse management system into Podfather, optimise and visualise routes, track deliveries and capture proof of delivery confirmations in real-time which is a huge improvement on what we were doing before.”
The Podfather system is being used to plan optimised vehicle routes which automatically take customer time window, vehicle capacity and driving time into consideration. This has enabled the SLS team to improve efficiencies across its own fleet and minimise third-party courier loads. In addition, the Podfather driver app is enabling SLS to share delivery routes with drivers, track vehicle movements and capture electronic proof of delivery information in real-time. Real-time route information is also helping customer service teams to handle delivery queries with ease.
“The Podfather solution has slotted into our business infrastructure relatively easily and within a matter of weeks we’ve been able to roll the system out across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland,” adds Mowbray. “Drivers have gotten to grips with the app and our teams have found the planning functionality intuitive; being able to visualise journeys on a map and manipulate routes has been a bit hit with our planning teams.”
“Scientific Laboratory Supplies is delivering a wide range of critical care products so delivery reliability is a must for an operation such as this,” adds Colin McCreadie, Managing Director at Podfather. “This swift rollout is a testament to our robust API which means Podfather can integrate with a wide range of business systems, with minimum fuss and our easy-to-use interface means it’s a straightforward transition for planning teams, even those who have historically planned manually.”
