May 2001

Wavelength's e-fulfilment business originated in the world of marketing support, and Peter Rowlands finds the two disciplines have a great deal in common

"What exactly is fulfilment?" asks Jeff Larcombe, managing director of Wavelength Fulfilment. "It's become an industry buzzword, but a lot of people aren't really clear about what they mean by it."

As far as Wavelength is concerned, historically fulfilment has mostly meant promotional support services. In particular, it's meant getting sales materials out into the physical world to back up marketing initiatives by major companies. The product could range from sales literature for shops to display stands for garages and actual promotional items.

Along with all this, Wavelength's activities have also covered all the complex functions that come before the actual delivery. These include storage, picking, packing, kitting, re-configuring, print finishing. Sometimes they also involve mail-order handling, coupon redemption and call-centre management.

You might notice that the list doesn't specifically include e-tail deliveries, even though they have come to be categorised generally as fulfilment ­ or at least, "e-fulfilment". But as Jeff Larcombe puts it: "Why shouldn't we offer this? Almost everything we do is relevant to the e-commerce market. Whereas other logistics companies are struggling to get their fulfilment resources in place, we've been doing it for years."

Indeed, if you look carefully at the Wavelength business, it seems almost tailor-made for the e-fulfilment market. It's based at Rugby, right at the centre of the country; it has a sizeable but not over-large warehouse that's set up to handle multiple products; it's well practised in short-run business; it has plenty of experience of customer interaction through its call centre; and it has some advanced computer resources to bind it all together.

The e-commerce opportunities have certainly not been lost on Julian Kent, who joined four years ago to head up sales at Wavelength after spending over three years with Air Miles. Although his background is in direct marketing, his remit includes developing new business opportunities, and he sees e-fulfilment as falling squarely in this arena.

"We don't want to rush headlong into it," he says, "but we've made it clear that it's part of our portfolio."He says the company has already been in talks with several potential e-fulfilment clients ­ particularly with organisations that are themselves involved one way or another in the fulfilment market.

In terms of its existing customer base, Wavelength certainly has little to prove. The list includes some of the best-known corporate names around ­ BP, Caradon, Dunlop, Hush Puppies, Kraft Foods, MK Electric and Otis Lifts, to name but a few. To those unfamiliar with the specialist world of marketing support, the obvious question is why such big names need a company like Wavelength to help them ­ especially when most of them have their own well-founded logistics capabilities. "The problem for them is that our kind of work doesn't fit in well with their established operations," Julian Kent explains. "Their existing infrastructure is often too rigid, whereas we offer flexibility."

That flexibility was certainly on view when e.logistics Magazine visited the company. The range of products being handled included literature for Amnesty International, brochures for Caradon and service station materials for BP, including dump bins and "nozzle talkers". The company was in the midst of a ring-pull redemption programme for Carling, while a T-shirt distribution project for another customer was amply in evidence.

The company's consumer response activities are also wide-ranging, and include a reader enquiry service for users such as Caradon and British Gypsum. Julian Kent says that increasing numbers of enquiries these days come by email, having been re-directed from the client's own Web site. "In a way the origin doesn't matter. We simply supply what's been requested." There is also a direct mail operation. "We're not a fully-fledged mailing house," Kent emphasises, "but we specialise in personalised, non-mechanised mailings."

The call-centre operation is also wide-ranging, taking in both business and consumer enquiries. Wavelength uses the SDX INDeX digital call distribution system, which allows operators to identify the type of call and respond accordingly. Credit-card processing is included among the menu of options.

The need for this kind of versatility has made Wavelength highly adaptable ­ something very much in evidence in the warehouse. "We can't divide the capacity up between different customers," Kent says. "The work is too seasonal, and volumes fluctuate too much. So we have to integrate different products in the same physical space."

At 8,000 sq m and 5,120 pallet positions, the Rugby warehouse is in fact substantial, but Julian Kent emphasises: "We don't make money out of storage." If anything, he says, warehousing is regarded as a necessary evil ­ albeit one that contributes significantly to the company's strengths. "But we don't like to see product sitting idle in here for too long. We'll actually do crazy things like tell customers if their product has been sitting here for six months without moving. Simply storing product indefinitely is not what we're about."

To be able to pick up this kind of detail, Wavelength operates a system known as "perpetual stock inventory", under which it checks everything in the warehouse on a constantly rotating basis. It's a chargeable service, but one which long-term customers are encouraged to take up. "It means we can pick up errors much more quickly," Kent says, adding that in the long run this is likely to save rather than cost customers money.

Although theoretically the warehouse is not divided into specific areas, there is in fact a special fast-moving section adjacent to the packing area. But even this varies in function over time. "For instance, we might store garden umbrellas there during the summer, but move them back into storage in the off-season."

Wavelength is equally responsive when it comes to final deliveries. While much of its product is sent to retail outlets of one sort or another, it is also comfortable with one-to-one consumer deliveries.

Wavelength's Midlands location puts it in easy reach of the big parcels hubs, and at the moment it mostly uses ANC ­ "good on both price and efficiency," in Julian Kent's judgement. It prints off its own labels, which means product can be trunked straight to ANC's hub at Stoke. "So half the consignments that we send via ANC's 'economy' service actually get there next day." It also uses ANC for next-day deliveries ­ in this case working directly through the local branch at Coventry. "It's more cost-effective to use one company if you can," Kent says. However, Royal Mail is also used where appropriate for smaller drops. At the moment Wavelength is particularly proud of a new piece of software it has developed. InsiteOne is an Internet-based order-processing system which also offers users an immediate real-time view of their current stock availability and order history from any Web browser.

It's a drill-down system, allowing users to view order information on a selective basis. They can even click through to ANC to chase up PODs. Access to different levels of data can be password-controlled, and can be varied, for example, according to the seniority of the staff member using it. It links to a menu-driven, text-based back office system.

It is much more than just a response system. It can issue email alerts and proof-of-delivery documentation automatically, and can be set up to provide financial information and handle planning functions. Management reports are generated overnight and automatically rendered in Adobe Acrobat format. "We used to have to print them out and post them to clients," Kent says. "The new system is much faster."

In a way InsiteOne is a bit like a cross between a shopping site and an online supply-chain management system. Exploiting that parallel, the interface itself (customisable for major customers) has hints about it of a cleanly-designed Web shopping site, even though it is not intended for B2C business as such. The point is that to customers it positions the company very clearly as being thoroughly Internet-savvy.

InsiteOne runs on an IBM AS/400 Web server, and its interface was programmed by an Ascot-based company called Morpheus. "AS/400 Web programmers are like gold dust," Julian Kent comments, "so we were glad to find them." Wavelength is a long-standing AS/400 user, and its own master database runs on a separate AS/400 unit.

The shopping basket metaphor looks set to be taken even further in the next stage of Wavelength's IT roll-out. It has just licensed the Websphere Commerce suite from IBM, and will be using this to develop online catalogues and offer a "shopping-basket" purchase process to users. All this will probably be linked with Wavelength's existing back-end system. Clearly this would represent a significant resource in any move by Wavelength to offer an online presence to B2C customers.

One way or another, it's hard to resist the conclusion that even if marketing support remains the company's main focus, the move into e-fulfilment is already happening seamlessly. So if this is the kind of resource you're after, now might be a very good time to make yourself known.