Leading in-night parts and equipment delivery company ByBox has expanded the scope of its work for The Tech Guys with the introduction of two new services that help to increase supply chain efficiency.
The enhancements were developed to meet The Tech Guys need for new ways of working that more accurately reflect the demands of its changing business profile. In the process, they have delivered cost and time savings, and boosted the strength of the relationship between the two companies.
Now, in addition to moving over 2,000 shipments a night using its unique UK-wide, 18,000-strong, 1,200-location box delivery network, which includes a parts return service meeting the requirements of the WEEE Directive, ByBox will be providing The Tech Guys with new stockholding and customer laptop reimaging services.
Best known for providing after-sales support for customers of Dixons, Currys, PC World and The Link in their homes using a 500-strong team of service engineers, The Tech Guys recently issued its mobile PC engineers with a new van kit containing 23 essential items they need.
But The Tech Guys didn't have room to hold stock of all these items in its own warehouse in Lincoln, so it asked ByBox to store them at its central Coventry distribution facility. To add value to the basic stockholding service, ByBox also devised a better way for an engineer to order them using a new web portal that accepts orders up to 8.00pm each night and guarantees delivery pre-8.00am the next morning into the box they nominate.
The solution is proving to be an important one, as The Tech Guys insist that engineers are never without a full set of items for their van kit. Additionally, it has also been extended so that ByBox can supply these items to the company's repair agents as well as mobile engineers, another useful benefit.
Working with The Tech Guys business-team technicians for the first time then led to the development of a second new ByBox service, linked to The Tech Guys provision and delivery of loan laptops while a contract business customer's faulty laptop is repaired.
Now, as well as returning and booking-in the faulty laptops and sorting these for repair, ByBox has set up a first 'Technical Inspection Area' where those laptops that require it are reimaged before going back into stock. Once reimaged, the laptops are booked back into stock using ByBox's unique Thinventory system, a single platform that manages the supply chain from end-to-end.
ByBox says that by reimaging the laptops on site it can save The Tech Guys a day that would otherwise be lost moving the computers to an appropriate place to carry out the work, and it hopes to extend this service to other customers in the future.
With the two new services up and running, ByBox is currently trialling a third which, if successful, is planned for introduction next year. This involves The Tech Guys provision of brown goods, such as TVs, and their maintenance. In the trial, another first for the company, ByBox is providing two-man teams to deliver and install TVs on behalf of The Tech Guys, working out of a bespoke depot that houses the stock.
It is yet another example of the supply chain innovation that ByBox specialises in, and a further demonstration of its pledge to customers to find a practical solution to every logistics challenge.
The Tech Guys is the first to acknowledge that its involvement with ByBox in recent years has made a huge impact on the effectiveness of its own services, and that the company's innovation and problem-solving has enabled the new levels of flexibility needed to grow the business.
The new services underscore that commitment, and several more supply chain enhancements are currently being discussed between the two companies and are in various stages of development, says ByBox.