As part of creating the Optima 2017 business plan we looked at how well we did in 2016.
Optima Goals for 2016:
Optima had several goals in 2016, notably:
- Improving quality and reliability
- Expanding functionality
- Increasing customer base
So, how did we do?
Improving quality and reliability
One of the things that sets Optima WMS software apart from other warehouse management systems is our quality and reliability, and so we were keen to improve the quality and reliability of our products and services even further.
In 2016, the responsibility was given to David Appleby, General Operations Manager, to:
- Bring together the Projects, Support and Development/Testing departments
- Streamline operations
David also wanted to add even greater stability and more performance improvements to the Optimiser WMS software.
This was achieved through:
- Hard work from developers and testers
- Focusing on overhauling our “auto-picking” and export file generation processes
“As a team, we consolidated our efforts and significantly improved our expertise and quality of work.
Making these improvements across the different areas of the business has significantly reduced the number and severity of support requests.
This means Optima now provides a better product and service for our customers and their customers, and we can concentrate more on making our products and services better, and less on resolving support requests.”
Expanding functionality
We wanted to expand the functionality of our products.
To do this, we implemented:
- New ecommerce marketplace integration (Shopify)
- Several new courier integrations including UPS
- A completely new file export service:
- Designed to meet the demand of today’s ecommerce customers
- Capable of sending thousands of files a minute to external systems
- eg. ERP system, CRMs or bespoke ecommerce websites
- Several brand new features to improve how our customers use Optimiser
Thanks to this enhanced functionality, we are now better able to meet the ever-increasing and ever-changing needs of modern businesses, whether on an ecommerce site, in a traditional retail store or in a factory environment.
Increasing customer base
Rather than resting on our laurels or concentrating solely improving our products and service for existing customers, we wanted to grow our customer base too.
We saw:
- 28% increase in our customer base during 2016
Thanks to the great product and service we offer, referrals and word of mouth recommendations, and the hard work of our business development team, 2016 saw our customer base increase significantly.
In addition
In 2016, Optima also:
- Took on 3 new staff, including an additional project manager to handle increased new projects
- Installed more new implementations this year than ever before
- Worked on more projects with our existing customers:
- Implementing new processes or bespoke integration for them, including:
- Integrating with Amazon “Seller-Fulfilled Prime”
- Integrating with automated-warehouse system OWCS from Netherlands company Ortec
- Implementing new processes or bespoke integration for them, including:
Some stats
Whilst we’re obviously not keen on divulging sensitive customer and business information, we’re happy to report that 2016 saw a huge number of items shipped and files exported.
We saw:
- 22.7M Total items shipped
- This equates to almost 1 item shipped via Optimiser per every 3 people in the UK
- 1.2M Total files exported
- This equates to almost 1 file exported via Optimiser every 26 seconds
“After compiling this, it’s clear there’s much credit due to the staff at Optima for their hard work and effort.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has helped Optima have another fantastic year. From our staff here, to our customers who trust us and rely on us to help them manage their products”
2017 Goals
Our goals for 2017 include:
- Continuing to grow by:
- Helping even more new customers manage their warehouse better this year
- Implementing more performance improvements like overhauling the file import system to handle increasing volumes of order imports
- Implementing more features in conjunction with our clients such as:
- More ecommerce marketplace integrations
- More courier integrations
- More brand new features to help our customers provide better services
