Mintsoft and CK Fulfilment
This 3PL management system case study shows how Mintsoft has supported the rapid growth of Preston-based ecommerce fulfilment 3PL - CK Fulfilment.
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Revenue growth year on year
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Order output growth year on year
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Decrease of cost per order
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Picking accuracy
Who are CK Fulfilment?
CK Fulfilment are a Preston-based 3PL, founded in 2022 by e-commerce retailer Rebecca Kane. After running her e-commerce brand Silver Mushroom for 10 years, Rebecca decided to stop using a 3PL, take her own order fulfilment in-house and start her own fulfilment business to help like-minded brand owners, grow their businesses by outsourcing fulfilment to a 3PL that understood their needs and that they could trust.
The Challenge
With 10 years experience of running Silver Mushroom, Rebecca knew that to successfully change their business model & start a new 3PL, they would need to implement a software system that would irradicate the fulfilment problems she’d previously faced. To fulfil orders, the team at Silver Mushroom were relying on manual processes and their unconnected platforms such as their web platforms to handle orders, courier portals for shipping and spreadsheets for stock management.
Managing Director, Rebecca Kane said, “I think it's probably easier to ask what challenges we didn't face. We were picking on paper invoices, we did our order management within the web platform and we did our labelling in the courier portals.
There was a lot of manual input and a lot of room for error, so our pick accuracy was very low, we were finding that there was a lot of errors in orders going out and getting orders out on time was really, really difficult.”
In addition, Rebecca knew they needed to launch CK Fulfilment with a system that would allow them to work in collaboration with their 3PL clients, as well as service Silver Mushroom’s e-commerce fulfilment needs.
“Since we implemented Mintsoft the revenue growth of the company is up 287% year on year, and our order output is up 445% year on year.”
User-friendly Interface
One of the deciding factors was Mintsoft’s user friendly interface, which would enable CK’s owners, warehouse staff and their clients to see orders at any time, as they progress through the fulfilment journey.
Operations Director, Tony Barnes said “We looked at a couple of other warehouse management systems and I've been on many management systems and it struck us as something that would be easy to use. If it's easy to use for management level, it is definitely going to be user-friendly for the warehouse operative.”
Rebecca added, “We liked the fact that we can give the clients access to Mintsoft and work together. from a client perspective, we wanted software that would keep the clients stock in order and help them to grow.”
Barcode Scanning
One of the features that has helped CK Fulfilment most is the barcode scanning and verification offered by Mintsoft and it’s mobile app. CK are able to scan each stock item at every stage of the process, which then updates the stock’s status – making it easy to see where orders and stock levels are, at any given time.
Tony said, “From an inventory point of view, scan verification and being able to scan everything through the doors, into locations, out of the locations and through the pack stations was a massive win for us. If your stock's intact, you've got good management and good processes, you should fly through orders during a week.”
With Mintsoft, CK Fulfilment’s picking accuracy is around 100% at all times, and Tony credits this to having the right staff, training and processes, alongside a reliable system.
“Our picking accuracy is close to 100% hundred percent and that is all because of system control. You've got to have the right staffing, the right training, the right processes, but without the system, you're going to struggle to a certain degree.”
Performance Improvements
Most notably, CK Fulfilment have been able to grow their business rapidly since 2022. Originally, Silver Mushroom was 98% of the order output, whereas now it’s approximately 6%, as their client base has grown from 1 to 29.
Rebecca added “Since we implemented Mintsoft the revenue growth of the company is up 287% year on year, and our order output is up 445% year on year.”
In addition, through using the reporting suite in Mintsoft, CK Fulfilment have been able to track their warehouse productivity, and over the past 2 years used the data insights to decrease their cost per order by 71%.
Tony explains, “Since implementing Mintsoft, our cost per order has dropped by 71%. This is because we've been able to interrogate productivity figures, see where the costs are, streamline the processes, and that is the effect of having a system to allow us to get into the data.”
He adds “If you didn't have the reporting features in Mintsoft and you didn’t have the ability to dive into the data, you wouldn't be able to find out which areas you need to approve.”
What’s next for CK Fulfilment
Due to their rapid growth since 2022 and having recently onboarded their 2 largest clients to date, CK Fulfilment have had to acquire additional warehouse space. They plan to use Mintsoft to manage multiple warehouses, using the external warehousing for storage and replenishment for their primary location.
Rebecca added that since Mintsoft has improved productivity for both CK Fulfilment and Silver Mushroom so drastically, it has allowed them to relaunch the Silver Mushroom brand and website and achieve a huge goal they set for themselves.