Warehouse overhaul improves customer experience

The overhaul of warehouse process included a review of overall efficiencies across key areas, in particular goods in, picking and packing, and also teams and systems, focusing on improvements that would enable the Group to achieve planned growth in 2021 and beyond. With customer transactions in Q1 already +156% vs. 2020, the Group’s existing WMS was no longer delivering against heightened customer demand.

Peter Kitchener, COO at Create Better Group, commented, “Our existing WMS was putting barriers in our way. Warehousing is at the heart of our customer experience. Our decision to partner with Peoplevox has helped to improve operations hugely. Peoplevox are a reputable company with a number of large, blue-chip organisations under their wing, and working with them has given us the power to build our brand around scalable fulfillment. The move to Peoplevox was also mapped at the same time as a complete overhaul of our racking system, aided by local company, UK Racking, to utilise our space to the maximum. Working with both companies at the same time allowed me to plan optimal locations, looking at size and quantity of SKUs. We now have more than double the number of pick locations and a bulk pallet storage that can be picked from at both levels. I’m pleased to say that our process can now adapt accordingly to customer demand at a moments notice, which is even more important with ongoing business growth. Peoplevox is a huge step forward from where we were. The final piece of the jigsaw the adjustment of our shift patterns from one shift, to two shifts, which will go a long way towards delivering an improved customer experience as we can now dispatch later into the evening.”