Company Spotlight: FarEye

Danny Hudson, Director of Retail & CPG at FarEye:

“The FarEye mission is simple – to make deliveries better for everyone.”

What does your company do and what is your USP?

FarEye’s intelligent delivery solutions enable businesses to reduce the cost of delivering their goods and become more sustainable while offering standout customer experience to retain a competitive edge in the marketplace.

One of retail’s key challenges is limited visibility across the delivery journey. This can result in higher costs and the need for manual decision-making, which in turn, places unnecessary strains on time, resources and budget.

At FarEye, we have developed the industry’s first low-code intelligent delivery platform. It provides an environment to create applications with a quick turnaround time and minimal code. This shortens the ‘concept to ship’ cycle, allowing retailers to go live and to market faster, instantly roll out process changes and keep their delivery ecosystems agile.

FarEye gives retailers the tools to modify or create new processes to meet their strategic business goals. Our solutions also empower large, established enterprises to become as lean, agile and innovative as startups.

What retailer’s need do you fulfil?

In 2022, retailers need to stay ahead of fast-evolving consumer demands and remain agile enough to innovate and adapt, while also being cost-effective and most importantly – profitable.

Increasing digitisation also means businesses are under more pressure than ever to deliver a personalised, seamless cross-device, cross-channel customer experience. Those who don’t adapt, will simply not survive.

This is where FarEye can truly add value and empower retailers to solve their challenges as painlessly as possible. For example, our solutions can help boost efficiency and reduce cost pressures through maximising vehicle utilisation, reducing idling time, increasing first-attempt delivery rates and optimising returns with fewer trips.

FarEye technology also enables better carrier communications, improved planning for drivers for faster returns and same-day orders, dynamic routing navigation in the final mile and track and trace flexibility for consumers.

How do you deliver on this USP?

FarEye technology is empowering retailers to reduce their delivery times by 27%, achieve 97% ETA accuracy, boost delivery productivity by 15%, increase first-attempt delivery success by 22% and save thousands of dollars by eliminating transportation risks and more.

Using FarEye solutions, our clients also collectively eliminate 21,334 tonnes of emissions per year.

For consumers, FarEye brings the transparency and control they increasingly expect. This includes end-to-end visibility and track and trace flexibility in the final mile.

The platform leverages millions of data points to predict shipment journeys. For retailers, this means their customers receive seamless, timely and cost-effective deliveries, increasing the likelihood of greater satisfaction, higher review ratings and NPS scoring.

How would you describe your vision?

The FarEye mission is simple – to make deliveries better for everyone. This is the vision that unites and motivates our teams – from the shop floor to the boardroom – and drives our business to evolve and succeed.

Which retailers do you work with?

Serving over 150 businesses across 30 countries, FarEye processes over 100 million transactions every month, supports more than 25,000 drivers and is integrated into a network of over five million vehicles, improving billions of deliveries worldwide.

What challenges are you addressing for multichannel retailers who aim to meet peak season demands?

FarEye helps retailers navigate fluctuating demand and manage the expectations of consumers during peak times such as Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Black Friday in several ways.

Operating on a SaaS model and driven by data, AI and machine learning, FarEye presents an alternative to the static monolithic systems retailers have traditionally used. These lack the functionality to drive modern dynamic delivery models.

FarEye’s intelligent delivery orchestration technology offers access to slot prediction, loop optimisation and dynamic routing at the final mile hub to give retailers the best possible chance to manage unpredictable factors and deliver their products on time.

Intelligent delivery visibility then enables the final mile driver to manage pickups, deliveries and returns and access turn-by-turn navigation. It also offers a driver crowdsourcing option to keep delivery processes as responsive and cost-effective as possible.

Features such as live tracking,ETA and secure communications also mean that retailers can fulfil the kind of delivery experiences consumers not only want, but expect as standard in 2022.

How are you using the emerging technology to support the retail growth?

The successful retailers of the future will be those that leverage intelligent, data-driven technologies offering the information, tools and agility to respond nimbly and adapt to the unpredictability of their market.

While optimal technologies, automated processes and solid omnichannel strategies are critical drivers of retail growth, one thing will never change – the need to win and satisfy customers.

The power to fine-tune their final-mile processes plays a crucial part in achieving this. And this is where FarEye can deliver real value, supporting retailers in differentiating, delighting consumers and inspiring the loyalty and advocacy which will lead to the ongoing success and evolution, not only individual businesses, but the industry as a whole.

What do you see as challenges for the retailers and suppliers over the coming years? How are you prepared to meet those challenges?

In an era where sustainability is perhaps more important than ever, customers expect not only transparency, but ongoing evidence that the brands they choose are doing all they can to be sustainable.

And sustainability does not just affect the purchase stage of retail. It is under the spotlight across all business operations, including last-mile delivery. Consumers want their chosen brands’ delivery processes to be as green as possible – from vehicle types and emissions to packaging. But at the same time, they expect convenience and speed, whether in the form of ten-minute, same-day or next-day deliveries.

While the struggle to balance these two seemingly opposing expectations is a challenge for retailers, it also presents opportunity. Not only to fully understand and leverage the vast possibilities of technology, but to offer standout, next-level customer experience.

Using FarEye technology, retailers can offer consumers assurance on the sustainability of their deliveries . FarEye’s platform offers access to greener vehicle route planning, allowing businesses to design and plan last-mile product delivery with an intelligent mix of green fleets. Long-haul truck route planning enables carriers to create optimal multi-day trucking routes to minimise idling times, avoid roadblocks and reduce fuel consumption.

FarEye’s carrier allocation system gives users the tools to select suitable delivery partners for different types of shipments. This can improve first-attempt delivery rates and avoid repeated transport and corresponding carbon emissions. Finally, FarEye platform users also have access to an adaptable sustainability dashboard which measures carbon footprint KPIs and breaks down carbon emissions by mode, route and carrier.

What targets are you aiming to achieve in the next five years?

Over the next five years, we plan to continue our mission to bring the benefits of the FarEye platform to an increasing number of businesses around the globe. Expanding geographically and processing petabytes of data, we are on track to hit 100+ million transactions per day and become the world’s number one platform for visibility in omnichannel fulfilment.