Podfather Delivery Software Gives APP Wholesale ‘Customer Point of View’
Overview
APP Wholesale Ltd (APP), part of Lords Group Trading plc, is a leading independent distributor and merchant of high-quality plumbing, heating, and renewable plumbing solutions across the UK. The company operates through two primary divisions: APP Plumbing and Heating, which has eight distribution centres nationwide, and Mr Central Heating, which runs 11 branches across the UK.
The business stocks more than 40,000 products across 16 locations and manages a nationwide next-day delivery service. Utilizing its commercial fleet, APP provides reliable, local distribution across the UK and handles up to 1,000 deliveries a day.
< 1 %
delivery failure
1,000
daily deliveries
40,000
product lines
Challenge
Prior to selecting the software, APP Wholesale Ltd ran a traditional transport management system that placed substantial limitations on administrative efficiency. The distribution process suffered from manual workflows that constricted operational speed and created friction across their back-office teams.
- Delivery operations depended heavily on back-office support for route planning, reporting, and customer service.
- Fully manual administration and communication tasks created ongoing operational bottlenecks.
- Legacy workflows placed a disproportionately high resource burden on internal support teams.
Solution
Following a thorough benchmarking evaluation process, APP selected Podfather to eliminate friction from its logistics operation and align with its strict sustainability goals. The company implemented Podfather's robust suite of logistics tools, which includes route planning, delivery optimisation, vehicle checks, real-time tracking, proof of delivery (POD) capture, and automated reporting.
The system was rolled out across multiple operational branches to sit alongside their existing workflows, backed by an intuitive interface and a strong support team. Podfather has worked closely with APP and its other software partners to introduce customized enhancements, allowing vendor codes, purchase order integration, and improved data flows to pass smoothly through back-office systems.
Results
The rollout of Podfather has significantly streamlined APP Wholesale's nationwide logistics operation, delivering measurable savings in overall mileage and fuel costs through smarter routing. The transition has brought about a significant reduction in physical paperwork and administrative hours while enhancing invoicing speed and accuracy.
By introducing real-time customer updates and digital proof of delivery capture, APP has dramatically optimized its job allocation capacity, completion rates, and customer fulfilment scores. The business has successfully dropped its delivery failure rate to below 1 percent within a single month of launch, providing the logistics team with a clear "customer point of view" to recognize shortfalls, react quickly to short-term issues, and reorganize its North of England and Scottish operations.
Prior to Podfather, our delivery operations heavily depended on back-office support for route planning, reporting, and customer service. This created bottlenecks and inefficiencies, with manual tasks slowing us down and placing a high burden on our support teams.
Craig Stanford
Operations Director, APP Wholesale Ltd
