couriers, which of course led to faster shipping services for our clients and their customers.
You have embraced technology from the outset, and are leading the way in your sector, most notably with ControlPort. What investment have you made in technology to date, and how important is technology to your business moving forward? We’ve invested several million pounds in ControlPort over the last decade. Technology has been a key differentiator for us – we were the first company to develop real-time, cloud-based fulfilment software and we won a Queen’s Award for Enterprise for that innovation in 2016. Today, some competitors are starting to build their own platforms.
So it’s important for us to listen to feedback from clients, continuously improve what we’ve got, and add new features that make their job easier and enhance the experience they provide to their customers. We’re also looking again at our original business model – licensing
the software to retailers, to use in their own facilities, and to franchisees, to expand our global network of fulfilment centres.
What impact has COVID-19 had on the business and can you give an insight into the type of decisions you have had to make because of this? Lockdown has meant that many more people are shopping online, so our clients are seeing many more orders than normal. We’ve continued to operate, to get essential products to shoppers, and help keep the economy afloat. Tose team members who can do so are working from home. Tose
who work in the fulfilment centre are still working there, and we’ve put stringent hygiene and social distancing measures in place, as well as new technology such as a fever-screening camera. Every decision has involved weighing up the needs of our clients and their customers, the safety of our people, and the guidelines that
the government has put in place. But based on the thank you notes we’ve had from clients and the feedback we’ve had from staff, it feels like we’ve made the right call on most things.
Fast forward to your next milestone, 2030 and you are celebrating 20 years in business, where is James and James as a business? In March 2020, we closed our first external invest- ment round – £11million from LDC, part of Lloyds Banking Group. And in April we won a second Queen’s Award, this time for International Trade, based on the growth of our export revenues over the last few years. The next 10 years are really about using that
investment to grow faster and expand at home and abroad. We’re looking at another building in Brackmills, which will be about six times the opera- tional space of our current one, so that’s the first step.
What has been your proudest moment to date? It would have to be winning our second Queen’s Award earlier this year. We won our first in 2016 for Enterprise and now we’ve received another for International Trade. Tese awards are particular- ly special because they’re not commercialised – they’re a prestigious way to be recognised for your contribution to enterprise, and winning one undoubtedly gives the whole team a real boost.
For more information vist
www.ecommercefulfilment.com.
ALL THINGS BUSINESS
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