Knowledge
Success story
This is how we are helping Omega achieve its growth targets
Success story
Omega Logistics (a subsidiary of Jan de Rijk) is a logistics service provider specializing in the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors. They handle deliveries for patients and pharmacies and deliver medical products to care institutions. Lives can be at stake, so meticulousness and punctuality are crucial for them. Omega Logistics is an innovative organization that aims to take all their customers’ logistics worries out of their hands. We interviewed Jordi de Koning, the Business Support Manager at Omega Logistics, about them and their cooperation with NextUp, and how they are able to serve their customers better using NextUp.
Before Omega Logistics and NextUp started working closely together, Omega had a different approach. “At first we had a WMS that was used as a TMS,” explains Jordi, “but it was no longer being developed. And being truly innovative matters to us, so we went looking for another system.”
The quest that Omega Logistics embarked upon was for an innovative, forward-looking TMS that matched their specific needs.
“There were lots of packages available that were standard, off-the-shelf solutions, but we needed something different. Our customers keep wanting more information and faster insights – and rightly so. What is more, they want to do a lot in a single program and so they prefer to have multiple systems linked together through APIs.”
When we found NextUp, we felt that they wanted to take that extra step. The same extra step that we take for our customers,” says Jordi. “We felt that NextUp had a good picture of what we were searching for. So we took a look together at our working methods and what was possible within NextUp itself.
Jordi, Omega Logistics
NextUp was launched within Omega Logistics at the beginning of 2019: a new TMS that fulfils the needs of Omega and its staff. Now, more than six months later, we are talking about the features that they work with every day.
“An important feature is having our own portal. Our customers have that too and this lets them see all the deliveries. That makes everything more transparent and we can give our customers a picture of the entire process.”
All the features of NextUp are designed to be intuitive, i.e. we match them up entirely to how our customers and their staff use them.
Planners are obviously a key component at any logistics service provider.
“NextUp gives our planners a better overview of where the driver is and they can respond to that in real time,” explains Jordi. “We use the app to make changes in the delivery instructions for instance, and the driver is informed immediately. It saves an awful lot of time and is less susceptible to mistakes than telling them by phone. We have a picture of all trips that are under way at all times, thanks to the mobile application. That has improved the transparency enormously.”
The entire process at Omega has been optimized. “First we make the orders, then reprocess them in the PTV and NextUp automatically turns them into trips. We can then put the shipments on the conveyor, scan them and – via NextUp – automatically print a label with a sort number. That lets us pick it straight away for the correct route, which is a really handy functionality.”
Since Omega Logistics was founded in 2011, the organization has improved its quality enormously and grown substantially. The cooperation with NextUp has been a boost for the services provided by Omega Logistics.
“We always look at what the customer needs,” says Jordi. “Then we write it up as a business case and fine-tune it using NextUp. We then discuss this with the customer and develop it further. Which all goes fast. Very fast. We got a complete TMS out there within nine months that now only needs fine tuning.”
