UK SMEs to become leading lights in sophisticated home delivery

Recognised as the market leading two-man home delivery software and utilised by many of the nation’s major high street retailers and third party logistics companies, HDi orchestrates the complex home delivery process from end-to-end.

The new cloud computing version, HDi SME, is supported by the Microsoft Azure platform and enables SMEs to reap the benefits of this high performance solution to compete on a level playing field with larger companies.

The workflow software allows businesses to dramatically improve customer service and their bottom line through increasing first time delivery success, maximising drops per vehicle, reducing time resolving problems and cutting the cost of customer contact.

HDi SME allows the end customer to select a delivery window at the point of sale, or later via a customer portal when they have had time to consider when is best for them. The delivery window is further narrowed after routing to remove inconvenience to the customer and increase first time delivery success. Customers can also track, and even amend, their order on the Internet, via PC, tablet or smartphone.

The delivery windows offered are the most cost efficient and environmentally advantageous to the delivery company, taking into account existing delivery capability and location.

Well established in the UK retail market, HDi has been developed over the last 17 years and is used for deliveries where the customer is required to be present to receive large or high value items.

The new single configuration version allows smaller organisations to implement it into their businesses quickly and economically.

Wayne Holgate, director at Axida, said: "SMEs can now adopt HDi without having to make technical infrastructure modifications or pay large amounts of money up front. The scalable nature of the Microsoft Azure platform makes HDi SME ideal for growing companies or those with seasonal fluctuations, as capacity can easily be increased or reduced."

Key features of HDi SME include multi-channel order integration, accurate delivery resource monitoring to achieve maximum utilisation of vehicles, route optimisation to minimise transportation costs, the ability to let customers manage their orders, the highlighting of problems that require immediate action, delivery tracking and returns management.

Longstanding customers using the established enterprise version of HDi for two-man and other forms of delivery include Laura Ashley, IKEA, Wickes, and third party logistics companies CEVA Logistics (which provides a dedicated service to Tesco Direct) and Wincanton (which provides dedicated services to M&S).