Please introduce your company, what it its USP?
Sorted is a delivery technology company based in Manchester. There’s a growing space between what customers expect and what retailers can offer when it comes to delivery. We call this the ‘delivery experience gap’ and we’re on a mission to fix it
What is your strategic vision?
We’re joining the dots between the key delivery players: the customer, the retailer and the carrier. All too often, this is a fragmented relationship. But with the right technology in place, it needn’t be a blocker for growth.
Retailers aren’t currently able to innovate at a speed that meets, or exceeds, customer expectation. Customers don’t want to have their delivery options prescribed to them anymore. They want to be able to specify when, where and how their stuff gets delivered. It’s that simple.
We’ve got the software solutions and tech wizardry to fix that for them, ultimately driving their conversion, customer experience and brand loyalty.
There are three main areas to service in an online shopping journey – the purchase, the pick pack and the parcel. Each of those stages (from checkout, to warehouse, to doorstep) are absolutely crucial touchpoints for ensuring that that consumer becomes, and remains, a customer.
What is your business doing in ecommerce at the moment?
The Sorted product family includes a scalable delivery management system, an ecommerce checkout personalisation plugin, a groundbreaking consumer delivery and returns app and a clever parcel price comparison website. We look at all stages of the ecommerce customer purchase journey and build our solutions to ensure delivery isn’t the forgotten element at each touchpoint.
Think about a 22-year-old millennial. It’s Thursday night and they want to order a new pair of shoes for their Friday night out. If the initial retailer they are looking to buy from only offers them a delivery option for the Monday, then the customer will go elsewhere to find a retailer that can deliver them on the Friday, at the specified time and location they want.
It’s now about convenience, speed and personalisation. Delivery is fast becoming the battleground for sales and customer loyalty. We arm retailers with the carrier access, tech capability and knowledge they need in order to succesfully fight that fight and come out on top.
How does this compare to what your competitors are doing?
There’s a real case of market inertia in the delivery space. Retailers accept the status quo and see it as an operational role sitting within a distribution centre that isn’t economically sound or resource-friendly to upgrade. This couldn’t be more wrong. Retailers can now be in complete control of their own delivery operations.
We seamlessly connect our customers to a world of carrier choice and personalisation, surfacing information that allows them to re-write the rules on delivery. Using technology from Sorted, retailers can now design their applications around their own business expectations and needs.
This isn’t prescribed and it isn’t a ‘one size fits all’. We give retailers a toolkit and allow them to build their own flexible solution, with the support of our expert dev team, obviously.
We’ve got a roadmap that doesn’t just follow the trend of the market, it sets it. That’s the difference we offer.
How do you see ecommerce developing in the longer term?
For us, it’s essential that the delivery experience gap is filled. This means retailers need to up their game and get their hands on the tech that will let them take control of their customer offering.
On-demand delivery is something we see as an increasingly disruptive power in the retail space. We’re looking at the move from next day to same day delivery and next hour delivery, from inflight changes to kerb side and – dare I say it? – drone delivery. This means ecommerce teams, warehouses and operations need to have the pace to adapt to these changes.
The key to all of this is embracing new technology. Underpinning all this, the customer needs to be at the heart of everything.
Customer Case Study
Missguided is an international online fast fashion brand, established in 2009 by Nitin Passi and based in Manchester. As well as the UK, it serves eight global websites covering Ireland, France, Spain, Germany, Poland, a ‘Europe’ site, plus America and Australia.
The company asked Sorted to help it to come up with a solution to improve its international returns process. Previously, once international customers had handed their parcels over at a post office counter, the stock was untrackable during its journey back to the company.
Sorted software provides the retailer with access to a number of return carrier partners, whilst also providing a wealth of data in the advanced analytics suite. As a result, the retailer’s operations teams can manage returns demand easily at their distribution centre, as well as being able to quickly amend carriers and services as the business expands and launches in new territories. The technology has simplified the management and tracking of returns and enabled measurement of the process, all of which is greatly enhancing the customer experience.
SORTED IN BRIEF
Date founded: Set up by David Grimes in 2009
Global reach: Sorted is on track to be live in 19 countries,, 12 languages and nine currencies
Customers: Sorted Group have a growing client base of some of the biggest names in retail including Missguided, Lush and Matalan
In May 2017 Sorted’s revenues had increased by 500% YOY. The Manchester based business is underpinning this growth by doubling its headcount since the start of the year, focusing on its software and development teams in order to enhance its platform further For more information about Sorted, please visit: sorted.com
Telephone: 03300 555 284
Email: info@ssorted.com
This Company Spotlight was produced by InternetRetailing and paid for by Sorted. Funding articles in this way allows us to explore topics and present relevant services and information that we believe our readers will find interesting as well as informative.
