What does your company do?
We provide cloud-based warehouse management systems (WMS), mainly on a Software as a Service (SaaS) basis. From fast growing start-ups to multinational corporations, more and more retailers are turning to Snapfulfil to optimise inventory, space and resources in their warehouses. We also have a number of large enterprise clients including Coca Cola and Vodafone that use our legacy WMS to run their operations.
What is your USP?
Being SaaS-based we have two unique selling points. Firstly, we can implement in eight weeks on any size of site. This is unique – it takes most of our competitors anything from three months to three years. As a result, we are one of just 12 companies in the world to be included in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant for Warehouse Management Systems.
Secondly, if you take our SaaS model on, you pay nothing until go live – then you start your monthly payments. This means you get the project up and running quickly with no capital outlay.
It also allows customers to temporarily increase the number of software licenses and devices they use, for as long as they need them and revert back to their original agreement when activity levels return to normal. This provides a highly cost-effective and flexible warehouse management solution to support their peak trading periods. Again, this is unique.
What new functionality does your latest version give to retailers?
We’ve got a highly sophisticated, feature rich WMS that gives retailers full Tier 1 functionality, including single and multi-order picking, pack stations, multi-carrier integration, rate shopping and returns management – all essential functions of ecommerce warehousing and fulfilment operations. We’ll also be launching an all-new new version of the system in 2017 including a state of the art, graphical user interface and a new suite of management information tools including a Q&A tool to enable live interrogation of the database – this has the potential to revolutionise warehouse management systems.
We offer massive scalability from five users to 500 on the same system. In fact, the ceiling can actually be 1,000. We can also handle massive order volumes – during the 2015 peak, we were handling around
150,000 transactions a day for one of our largest customers.
When did you start the company and why?
The company was started many years ago by one man who saw the future of software engineering. We still have that single owner: Hugh Stevens, who even today writes some of the code for us. Back in 1966, he set up a shipping software company based around software to help manage customs and excise processes in bonded warehouses. He then won the Coca Cola warehouse management deal 27 years ago, which set us going. Hugh wanted the company to be a technical leader and that has how we have driven this. We have invested heavily and are now reaping the competitive advantage.
How would you describe your company’s vision?
We want to carry on growing and become the go-to WMS provider for etailers. We only started marketing about a year ago and we are ramping this up. The vision now is to now grow as fast as we can across the regions we are in, then add more. We were turning over £2m three years ago and are up to £8.5m this year. We are now working with larger SMEs and smaller enterprise companies and many of our customers have grown into this space with Snapfulfil. A great example is Younique – a massive cosmetics company in Salt Lake City that has grown 14,000% and which is the fastest-growing company in the world. We took it from 60 orders a day to 6,000 orders a day!
What is your market position and what gap are you filling in the UK?
We are the leader in ecommerce retailing WMS and are now hoping to consolidate this position and win every deal out there. Snapfulfil is a best of breed, Tier 1 WMS which can be implemented in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of traditional, on-premise WMS’, which have traditionally been out of reach for smaller retailers and have become increasingly bloated and outdated. This effectively levels the playing field, allowing SMBs and smaller enterprise level retailers to compete more effectively with the likes of Amazon.
Who are your customers?
In the UK, we work with retailers including Bensons for Beds, Edinburgh Bicycle Co-operative, Harveys, LoveCrafts, Oak Furnitureland, Shop Direct Group, The Cotswold Company and The Hut Group. In the US, we work with a large number of super fast-growing multi-level marketing, subscription commerce and ecommerce retailers including ASEA, Dream Products, CoolGlow, Coupang, Hollar, Jamberry Nails, Winc and Younique.
What do you see as challenges in the coming year and what are you doing to meet those challenges?
I think the big challenge is ecommerce scalability and ensuring warehousing operations can keep pace with growth. Growth is a great problem to have, but it’s still a problem and many warehouses just don’t have the processes or systems in place to allow them to scale, especially when it’s only for short periods around sales promotions or a Christmas peak. With consumers continuing to demand everything faster and cheaper, delivering the required service levels while still making a profit requires a streamlined, scalable warehouse operation which, in turn, requires a professional warehouse management system such as Snapfulil.
Customer case study – The Cotswold Company
The challenge: Prior to implementing Snapfulfil, The Cotswold Company were using paper-based processes generated by the company’s SAGE accounting system to run the warehouse. Without a proper system to manage the warehouse, the operation suffered from poor inventory and picking accuracy and sub-optimal productivity.
The solution: The Cotswold Company took the decision to look for a professional warehouse management system to automate processes and optimise efficiency and accuracy within the warehouse. Following a review of possible vendors, the company selected the Snapfulfil Cloud WMS.
The Cotswold Company’s Warehouse Manager, Paul Wilson said:
“We needed something which was user-friendly for any warehouse operative but at the same time, was functionally sophisticated. Snapfulfil offered the best of both worlds.”
The benefits: As a result of implementing Snapfulfil, The Cotswold Company has benefited from significantly improved accuracy, efficiency and productivity and has successfully moved away from an unsatisfactory third-party logistics operation.
Paul Wilson said:
“We saw an immediate improvement in operational efficiency and, over time, have used Snapfulfil to better manage and allocate resources within the warehouse. As a result, I’d say we’re around 30% leaner and, in my experience, operate with significantly fewer people than many similar warehousing operations.
Snapfulfil’s structured cycle counting functionality has removed the need for an annual stock take and the associated loss of revenue.
Receiving capacity has also increased significantly, from three containers per day previously up to eight.
The future: The Cotswold Company’s Marketing Director, James Birtwhistle concludes,
“We know that what we offer appeals to a market that’s not limited to the UK. Our aspiration is to continue to service our customers’ demands overseas through international fulfilment and this is one exciting area we’re actively pursuing.
“The company is keen to develop the business architecture that will support the levels of growth it is experiencing and Snapfulfil is central to that objective.”
SNAPFULFIL IN BRIEF
Company name: Snapfulfil
Global reach: North America, South America, all the EU, Hong Kong
UK Launch date: 1966
Turnover: £8.5m
Customers: 100+
Number of employees: 70
Partners: Cisco, Honeywell, iLand, Metapack, NetDespatch, NetSuite, VMware, Zebra Technologies
Contact details: For more information about the company and what it does go to
www.snapfulfil.com or see all contact channels at www.snapfulfil.com/contact-us
