Russell is a Scottish based, family-owned logistics group that provide a wide range of logistics services to our partners across the UK. Our “Group” is made up of multiple branded divisions.
Our wide array of services allow us to provide an “end to end” logistics service across the entire supply chain which has allowed us to build strong relationships with our partners’ evolving and growing supply chain needs. In addition, our customers expect us to integrate with their systems and processes closely.
Today, Russell has strong capabilities in some of these areas, particularly in our ability to exchange EDI messages from our separate logistics systems. This capability allows us to receive orders and requirements electronically from our partners. We can also pass certain order updates back as changes happen.
However, such EDI integrations today are built in operational “silos” and do not cover the entire supply chain. The limitation here is the software systems operate separately, in a “point to point” configuration. In this configuration, we do not get the benefit of our wide array of services in an interconnected configuration. Our services for a single client span multiple areas – Road, Rail, and warehouse. The current “silo” infrastructure means that our internal staffing needs to manually update and duplicate orders across the multiple line of business systems (warehousing, transport, accounts) is very costly.
This manual integration causes many internal issues; manual keying errors, systems are slow to update, and therefore is burdened with unnecessary cost. Secondly, this “silo” infrastructure means that we cannot give our customers a live and clear picture of their stock, assets, and distribution work across the full supply chain.