Order Processing and
Warehouse Management Software
News
PFS offer fulfilment services for over 25 online retailers from their operating centres in Cardiff, Jersey and Guernsey. After a two month evaluation in Guernsey, the Realtime Despatch service is now being rolled out across all three locations.
Key requirements for PFS were the ability of Realtime Despatch to provide comprehensive inventory management, support for many different order formats received from their clients and XML interface options for larger clients.
Phil Zoio, one of our directors and the technical lead in the Realtime Despatch team has been invited to present his opensource development framework 'Impala' to the ServerSide Java Symposium in Prague.
For those of us who take an interest in the technicalities of Java development this is impressive stuff. Phil introduced the Impala framework to our own development environment about a year ago and we started to see the benefits immediately.
Most software companies will tell you they have a structured approach to development, not many have an IT director who spends a major chunk of his spare time providing the opensource tools that make it possible.
Realtime Despatch has gained an XML interface that allows remote systems to make enquiries on the status of orders, stock levels, incoming deliveries and other key events.
Remote user access is provided over a secure SSL connection. The XML interface can be used to support integration with ECommerce shopping carts and to provide fulfillment businesses with a way of offering their clients a realtime view of the fulfillment operation.
The order import functionality has been extended to make importing different CSV file formats far easier. The powerful scripting language "Groovy" allows the administrator to apply logical branching, formatting and custom transformations to the incoming data.
The import process also supports a number of built-in transformations that make it easy to apply more complex logic to the incoming file. We've already developed a transformation to calculate the weight of incoming orders and another to sort UK orders by postcode for the Jersey and Guernsey postal services.
The custom reporting functionality of Realtime Despatch has been given a dramatic upgrade with the introduction of support for Jasper Reports and iReport.
Onscreen, PDF and CSV export reports can all be defined in the iReport graphical design tool before being introduced into your Realtime Despatch environment as XML configuration files. Over the next few months we will be introducing libraries of different reports which can either be used out of the box or tailored to suit your particular reporting needs.
A batch processing mechanism now allows orders to be streamed into distinct workflows that can be optimised to the nature of each batch type. Single-line orders can be picked in location order using picking lists, multi-line orders grouped by shipping option or heavy orders batched together to be given to your beefiest picker.
If you can think of ways to optimise the throughput of your operation by grouping different types of order together and treating them differently then the Realtime Despatch batching mechanism is waiting for you!
We have added a new alternative to the range of options available for integrating with Realtime Despatch systems. The new approach, dubbed the "Cart Integrator" is a simple PHP application that exchanges data with a remote Realtime Despatch system.
The cart integrator does not require the shopping cart software or database to be modified in any way and because it uses PHP and XML technology it can run on shared servers remote from the Realtime Despatch system.
SponsorBank are working with the Football Association as exclusive suppliers of the "Respect Zone" barrier. Realtime Despatch is delighted to be supporting Sponsorbank in the set up of their new warehouse and to be providing the hosted warehouse management and order processing system that SponsorBank will be using.
Androv Medical have chosen Realtime Despatch to support their warehouse operations in the UK and Germany. The Realtime Despatch system will consolidate orders from all Androv's language specific websites and allow the orders to be despatched from their warehouses in Germany and the UK using the UPS Worldship software.
