“For us BoxTop means – greater value and it’s good to have it on-board.
We have more to offer customers now, including much better visibility throughout the supply chain.
This is helping us win more business.”
- Alan Vincett
- Operations Director
- Oceanteam Logistics
Value on-board…
The background
Oceanteam Logistics, a highly successful independent freight forwarder, based near Heathrow, was founded in 2000. It has a wide variety of customers but is keen to expand both the business it does for existing customers and its total client base. To cope with the growing focus on this side of the business, they have expanded the export department and, more recently, have taken over the lease on the neighbouring premises.
The challenge
Oceanteam Logistics had an existing freight software system but it just couldn’t deliver what Oceanteam – and, more importantly, its customers – needed.
“For instance, we wanted a better web tracking system for our customers,” explains Alan Vincett, Operations Director. “And we needed a package that would link to our accounts software to help us work more efficiently.” Just as importantly, Oceanteam felt that it should be able to get faster response times from the software provider when any problems or queries arose.
Additionally, a major customer, was considering moving its European Spares Operation out of the Amsterdam warehouse of one of the world’s largest logistics companies. And Oceanteam needed a warehouse software system to be able to secure the business.
The solution
“We began working with BoxTop in January 2009,” says Alan. “The system is definitely more user-friendly and very logical. It is easy to show a new employee how to use it.” It also has better functionality, including creating air waybills, road freight CMRs and sea freight bills of lading more easily.
To win the new warehouse contract, Oceanteam thought it was faced with having to invest significant sums in a bespoke warehouse management system. “But when we looked at our existing BoxTop package, we found that everything we needed was in that – at no extra cost! That showed we had made the right decision when we decided to work with BoxTop.
“We talked to Christopher [Hewlett, BoxTop co-founder and Managing Director] and Alex [Delmonte, a member of the BoxTop development team] about BoxTop’s warehouse features and very quickly we discovered we already had a proven solution that could provide exactly what our customer needed.”
Using BoxTop’s web interface (BoxTrax), our customers can now access the inventory in real time and place orders 24/7.
The result
Since July 2009, Oceanteam Logistics has run the European distribution centre for one its customers. It arranges the collection of goods from throughout Europe, warehouses around 3,000 line items and then picks and delivers these items around the world at the customer’s request.
“BoxTop were an integral part of our securing the business,” says Alan. “We had the people and the skills but we needed to prove that we had the systems to match our customer’s requirements. BoxTop was so flexible that it allowed us to make the changes that our customer wanted – quickly, easily and without additional cost.”
An added bonus is that Oceanteam can now use BoxTop systems to attract other customers. “We have more to offer customers now – both the better visibility through the supply chain and the warehouse software. This is helping us win more business.”