ByBox in night distribution increases its presence in Europe

ByBox, the in-night distribution and field service solutions specialist is increasing its presence in Europe.

Now operating in France, the Republic of Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium, the ‘distribution revolution’ is growing and shows no signs of stopping.

ByBox, which has more than 18,000 drop boxes at 1350 locations in the UK alone, delivers parts overnight, pre 8am to its network of drop boxes or pre 10am direct to the customer site. All of these deliveries can be tracked in real time through ByBox’ unique Thinventory software platform.

This enables customers to ensure their service engineers meet their SLAs and by giving total transparency of stock at all times, it allows them to reduce their stock-holding and warehousing costs, substantially in some cases.

Indeed judges at the recent SITL Europe 2010 exhibition in Paris were so impressed with ByBox’ operation in France, they recently awarded it the coveted title of Best Innovation Services Transportation and Logistics. Praising ByBox’ "global turnkey solution", the judges said the system could readily be applied to other markets where reverse logistics and ‘last mile solutions’ were required, notably in e-commerce.

As well as delivering parts destined for field service engineers in several European countries, ByBox offers a solution for companies holding stock at centralised European warehouses which need to be delivered in the UK.

Parts can be picked as late as 7pm from locations such as Eindhoven, Munich, Frankfurt and Antwerp and still be delivered to the UK the next morning, pre-8am to a drop box or pre-10am to site, coming through the ByBox dedicated late hub in Coventry.

One of the world’s leading players in the reprographics market achieved substantial savings by closing its UK spare parts warehouse and centralising everything in its European hub. By using ByBox’ Inbound Europe service, they are able to get vital parts to their 280 field service engineers in the UK before 8am each day without any deterioration in customer service. ByBox collects parts at 6.30pm from the customer’s European hub and drives them through the Channel Tunnel to Coventry for onward distribution to the drop boxes.

ByBox also saved this leading company a small fortune by introducing a system whereby any spare parts that are not required for a particular repair are returned to the Coventry hub and stored for future use. Prior to this system being used, the customer had routinely overstocked on spare parts.

The ByBox Thinventory system keeps track of stock at all times; both in the warehouse and out on the road, eliminating the expense of unwanted stock sitting in engineers’ vans.

Mark Garritt, Managing Director of ByBox said: "In these tough economic times companies can no longer afford to tie up capital holding large amounts of spare parts in warehouses or allowing them to languish unused stock in engineers’ vans. Nor can they afford to miss targets in their Service Level Agreements and pay penalties because vital parts did not reach their engineers in time. ByBox has the solution to both these problems.

Our unique Thinventory system coupled with our network of drop boxes in the UK, the Republic of Ireland, Benelux and France allows our customers to provide a first-class service while stripping out unnecessary costs. They can keep stock-holding to the minimum and still be confident that the right part will reach the right engineer at the right time the next morning – no matter if the journey is hundreds of miles across the Channel or the Irish Sea."

In France, ByBox has established a network of more than 100 drop boxes in six regional locations from which it can serve engineers across the whole country and plans to more than double the network in 2011. In Belgium, ByBox has recently been awarded two contracts working in a joint venture with a local in-night delivery company, SLS, to provide pre 8am delivery to an initial 17 drop boxes.

In the Netherlands, along with drop boxes, ByBox have 23 Pick Up and Drop Off points (PUDO’s) and in the Republic of Ireland, ByBox offers a pre-10.30am service to drop boxes in the Dublin area and a pre-12 noon service to all other areas the next morning. Customers can also request that parts are delivered directly to site.

Customers in the Republic of Ireland also benefit from ByBox’ Technical Courier service in which engineers can carry out swap outs and simple repairs of an item at a customer’s site, and BlackStripe™ which automatically re-routes returned parts by using an intelligent 2D barcode which tells the ByBox scanning system that the part is a return and dynamically routes it back to the originator.

Established in 2000, ByBox is the leading force in in-night distribution and field service solutions and holds more than 70 per cent of the field service market, with customers including Coca Cola Enterprises, Konica Minolta and Inspired Gaming. Working with huge global brands, ByBox is fast becoming one themselves.