Royal Mail has bought NetDespatch, a leading shipping and parcel data management and labelling platform for postal and parcel carriers, in its latest acquisition.
The British postal group said the acquisition further enhances its in-house IT capability and expertise in parcel data management and labelling. It supports Royal Mail’s aim of providing its customers with increasingly sophisticated and integrated e-commerce solutions to better manage the shipping and tracking of parcels.
Net Despatch enables carriers to provide web-based applications and services to more than 130,000 of their business customers, allowing them to use delivery data directly transferred from order management and warehouse systems to automate the production of shipping labels, customs documentation and manifests as well as generate any required data files. The platform can also be used to make tracking available for the client from the point of despatch to final delivery.
The firm works with a wide range of e-commerce partners including other UK parcel companies and overseas postal services. Big-name parcel carrier clients include APC Overnight, Asendia, CollectPlus, Nightline, UK Mail, Yodel as well as New Zealand Post, while other clients include Amazon, Asda, ASOS, eBay, House of Fraser, John Lewis, Tesco and other well-known UK high street brands.
NetDespatch is already a supplier of shipping label solutions to a number of Royal Mail’s medium-sized retail customers. The business will remain under the leadership and management of NetDespatch directors, Matthew Robertson and Matthew Clark, and will be operated at arms-length, as a standalone external-facing subsidiary, enabling it to continue to securely provide services to all of its existing customers.
Nick Landon, Managing Director of Royal Mail Parcels, said: “The acquisition of NetDespatch supports our strategy of providing our customers with leading edge e-commerce software. It allows customers with complex IT estates to integrate with us quickly and with the minimum of effort, allowing them to improve the service they offer to shoppers. We are confident that this acquisition will support the continued growth of our parcels business with new and innovative software solutions as the needs of our customers evolve.”
Matthew Robertson, Commercial Director, NetDespatch commented: “We are incredibly proud of our achievements to date and believe that this acquisition will help us to continue to grow and to better service all of our clients. Our aim is to make what is a relatively complex process simple, delivering improvements and savings to everyone in the supply chain from retailer to carrier to consumer. E-commerce is exploding in the run up to Christmas and we expect to continue to steam ahead in 2016 and beyond.”
The deal will complement Royal Mail’s acquisition of Storefeeder earlier this year, the developer behind Royal Mail Click&Drop which, in addition to stock control and order management capabilities, provides similar labelling services for small online marketplace sellers. It also complements Royal Mail’s recent investment in Market Engine, which builds new marketplaces and enables businesses to manage online shop fronts in major global marketplaces.
