Go, take it to them, Fetch

By ADAM GIFFORD

First there was Spot. Now another dog is about to take up space on billboards, marketing the Freightways Express group's new e-commerce fulfilment service, Fetch.

"The dog hasn't got a name yet. We're running a competition on our intranet now for staff to come up with one," said David Tombs, managing director of Freightways Electronic Trading and Commerce Hub.

Fetch is Freightways' response to the problems United States e-tailers encountered last Christmas, when their sites were able to cope with the volumes of orders coming in but their businesses were unable to deliver the gifts.

Freightways managing director Dean Bracewell said key staff from the companies in the group sat down in January to develop their response to emerging e-business trends.

"We realised early in the piece we are not an internet business, we are a real business, offering real solutions," Mr Bracewell said.

"The barrier often to the second or third purchase in e-commerce is fulfilment or delivery of the last mile. When we looked at all our companies we realised we did have the answers to make sure our customers did get the second or third purchase."

Fetch, the service being launched today, will allow companies doing electronic commerce to incorporate a delivery system into their websites.

After online shoppers make their purchases, they will get to part of the site which is actually a Fetch plug-in, Smart Ship.

When they click on the delivery options - urgent, overnight, next day, next two days - the order is directed to the back end consignment systems of one of four Freightways courier companies: Sub 60, NZ Couriers, Post Haste and Castle Parcels. Customers can also opt to have warehousing and logistics subsidiary Stocklink hold their stock.

"It means we're using four companies, offering varying service standards and prices," Mr Bracewell said.

Fetch also includes a returns management service, to step in if a customer wants to send something back. This has proved one of the big logistical problems in the e-commerce world.

The Fetch concept gets around the internal competition built into the Freightways operation. Fetch will not have its own revenues, with revenue going through to the businesses which do the carrying.

Fortunately for Freightways, the fetch.co.nz address was still free.

"We'll be offering Fetch to our existing customers, who operate traditional supply chains but are looking at the internet as a new sales and marketing channel. They may feel they need a complementary supply chain.

"Then there are pure e-commerce players who may be starting up tomorrow with a website and a product line.

"Our recommendation is if you are starting up tomorrow as a pure e-commerce player, leave the total fulfilment process to Fetch and you will have your total fulfilment at a variable cost," Mr Bracewell said.

Freightways is a longtime user of Hewlett Packard HP 3000 systems. These have been integrated with new interactive websites using Java linking in to large HP Unix web servers.

Information services general manager Richard Mitchell-Lowe said plug-ins were being developed to allow Fetch to interface with the Windows NT solutions being used for many e-tailer websites, as well as for other common operating environments.

Links


Fetch