Davies Turner Case Study

“As a multimodal forwarder and logistics operator, our business can be complex serving many unique and specialist requirements from our customers. Through BY Dispatcher WMS, we have the flexibility to work the way our customers need us to work and fulfil their individual contractual requirements. Extending our WMS with Socius24’s User Service Portal has delivered significant benefits to our operation, streamlining processes, adding value to our customers and removing administrative burden.”
Darren Gurney, Logistics Systems Manager, Davies Turner

About Davies Turner

In operation since 1870, Davies Turner has become recognised as one of the UK’s leading multimodal forwarders and logistics operations. Their capabilities span air, sea, road and rail and they provide specialist services across a wide range of industries including Aquatics, Fashion & Retail, Fine Wines and Pharmaceuticals to name but a few.

Today Davies Turner employ over 850 people operating out of 22 locations and have a warehouse capacity in excess of 150,000 square metres (over 1.6 million square feet).

Background

Davies Turner pride themselves on being able to meet the unique needs of every one of their customers. They not only provide services to some of the most specialist sectors, but always look to cater for the specific nuances and requirements of each individual customer.

Having the technology in place to enable them to do this efficiently and effectively is key. This is why they first deployed Blue Yonder (formerly JDA and previously RedPrairie) Dispatcher WMS some 16 years ago. It offered them the breadth of functionality to manage such a broad range of customer requirements, while also offering them the flexibility and ease of use to quickly onboard new clients with a range of unique requirements, processes and SLAs.

Challenges

Davies Turner are always looking for ways to provide their customers with value-adding services and innovative ways to streamline processes and operations.

They were looking to provide their customers with digital access into their operation; the ability to gain real-time visibility on stock levels, to place orders from the field and to gain access to a wealth of key management information and reporting.

Providing their customers with direct access to BY Dispatcher WMS was not feasible. It would require each customer having a user licence for the WMS which would be cost prohibitive for what was required and would not meet the needs of their customers who were looking for a simplified, intuitive-to-use, sub-set of functionality.

Solutions Delivered

Socius24 has worked with Davies Turner for many years, providing BY Dispatcher WMS health check service to ensure optimal usage, providing Oracle up-graded software, assisting in the upgrade of their version of BY Dispatcher WMS and helping them to migrate to the cloud.

Davies Turner turned to Socius24 to help them with this requirement as they were confident that they understood their unique business and their expertise in BY Dispatcher WMS was second to none. Socius24 had developed a bolt-on to BY Dispatcher WMS, the User Service Portal (USP) which not only provid-ed an intuitive web-based interface into the WMS, but also provided additional functionality that would be invaluable to their customers.

Outcome

By extending the capabilities of BY Dispatcher WMS with The User Service Portal from Socius24, Davies Turner has gained some significant benefits.

MEET CUSTOMER NEEDS – The combination of BY Dispatcher WMS and Socius24 User Service Portal, and the ease at which it can be configured, means that Davies Turner are confident that they can meet the needs of any customer regardless of the specialist requirements of that sector or the particular SLAs for that customer.

ACCELERATE CUSTOMER ONBOARDING – The BY Dispatcher WMS enables Davies Turner to quickly onboard new customers into the system and configure processes against contractual commitments. Using Socius24 User Service Portal as the interface for these customers dramatically reduces training time required for each customer.

CUSTOMER PERCEIVED VALUE – Since introducing the User Service Portal, Davies Turner has seen a significant take-up by customers and real recognition of the value that it has delivered, in particular the ability for customers to see real-time inventory records and for them to be able to place online orders.

REDUCED SYSTEM COST – By leveraging the User Service Portal not only to provide access to key information for customers, but also to internal staff that do not require full access to BY Dispatcher WMS has allowed significant savings to be made in user license costs.

INCREASED EFFICIENCIES – Through providing such an intuitive way for customers to serve themselves around access to information and placing orders, has not only streamlined processes, but has reduced the burden on the administrative teams in Davies Turner.

Blue Yonder Dispatcher Warehouse Management System

Blue Yonder is one of the most recognisable and implemented solutions in the world.

Socius24’s expertise comes from our involvement in the design and development of the original RedPrairie Dispatcher solution, which enables us to fast-track deployment and ensure that our clients use its capabilities to the full. This reduces the cost and risk of deployment, leveraging a broad set of pre-built templates and plug-ins, allowing our customers to quickly gain the functionality they require.

Download the full case study

Click here to read updated case study