“Podfather will play an integral part in supporting our expansion helping to build early foundations for increased efficiency throughout the business,” commented Clive Whylie, Head of Operations at S&W Wholesale.
A top 100 Northern Ireland Business, S&W serves over 2,500 customers from its current location in Newry, conveniently located close to the border with the Republic of Ireland. Offering next day delivery of chilled, frozen and ambient temperature goods to both independent and symbol retailers, S&W holds an impressive offering of more than 4,000 products as well as offering 4,000 lines of full central billing. In January 2023 S&W became one of the largest known businesses in NI move to an Employee Ownership Trust (EOT) model of ownership providing an innovative succession plan for the company.
Part of the forward-thinking ethos, that is integral to S&W’s continued success and growth, is a continued investment in technology. Working with Podfather, S&W plans to review its current order management and delivery routing process. This will improve planning and realise driving efficiencies whilst still taking vehicle weight and capacity, driver shift length and customer delivery window details into consideration. S&W is also keen to explore other aspects of the Podfather system including the expanded use of vehicle checks to include trailers and incident reporting and the development of an electronic process to rectify reported defects.
A trial of Podfather’s ETA notifications, including email and SMS, is also being explored with the potential to add a live tracking portal giving S&W’s customers, support staff and management, real-time visibility of deliveries allowing for interventions if required. Customer reporting will also be enhanced with Podfather’s advanced electronic Proof of Delivery features including date, time and location stamped photos recording when and where a delivery was made, and who signed for it. This information is available in real-time and can be shared with a customer in case of a query. The detail, including item codes, could also be recorded against customer communications and used to automatically generate credit notes.
“We are working closely with Podfather to ensure the system meets our current and future requirements,” continued Clive Whylie. “This expanded use of the Podfather fleet management solution will complement our existing stock management system, voice picking technology, and retailer EPOS and Rescan Till Systems, to realise benefits across the transport and delivery operation.”
