Major fashion retailer River Island has saved £3 million by implementing a rule based approach to delivery through logistics systems company Metapack.

According to a statement from Metapack, until three years ago River Island staff used to assign each parcel to a carrier on an individual process when processing an order. This was manually intensive and cost the company money.

River Island has now implemented Metapack Manager and set up advanced allocation rules that dynamically assign parcels to the correct carrier based on factors including product type, value, size and delivery postcode.

“MetaPack’s rule-based methodology has provided River Island much greater flexibility in terms of an international proposition and carrier services based on order weight and value, and this has been reflected in the savings that have been made in the last three years,” commented River Island’s eCommerce Logistics Manager Sunil Bhudia.

“We can clearly see that international rates have been dropping substantially year-on-year, with greater customer satisfaction, lower loss rates and around a 39% overall fall in costs of overseas delivery. This equates to around £3m in savings over this period based on the decreasing average delivery cost, lower customer service interactions and lower lost parcels.”

The carrier integration brought by Metapack allows the fashion company to use a wider range of delivery services to fulfil international orders. Until it implemented the new system, River Island could only offer 3-4 international services but now international customers can choose from eight delivery options as well as PUDO services through personalised delivery options on the website’s front end.

Bhudia said that the MetaPack system has also boosted productivity.

“The uniformity that MetaPack offers has provided us with an integrated solution across a multitude of delivery channels, including home delivery, click and collect, PUDO and international delivery,” said Bhudia. “In terms of streamlined operations, there’s no doubt that working with MetaPack has made a considerable difference in reducing the inherent complexities of order fulfilment and carrier management.”

The MetaPack system includes MetaTrack  – which creates a consistent and centralised tracking experience for both River Island’s customers and their Customer Service teams, regardless of how many carriers are used.