Sustainable Supply Chain

Managing The Reverse Logistics Conundrum - A Chat With ReverseLogix Des Frawley

August 26, 2022 Tom Raftery / Des Frawley Season 1 Episode 248
Sustainable Supply Chain
Managing The Reverse Logistics Conundrum - A Chat With ReverseLogix Des Frawley
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Show Notes Transcript

With the advent of direct to consumer sales, not only is the forward supply chain coming under pressure, but more and more purchases are being returned, impacting the reverse supply chain.

To help large organisations manage this ReverseLogix have developed their returns management system (RMS), and to find out more about this, I invited Des Frawley to come on the podcast to tell us all about it.

We had a fascinating conversation covering why there is increasingly a need for a reverse logistics platform, the differences between forward, and reverse supply chains, and what the future of the reverse supply chain looks like

I learned loads, I hope you do too...

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Des Frawley:

So there's lots of actually different departments that are interested in returns and what it can do for them. And we try and get that message across when we're speaking to you know just the e-commerce team we're like, well, you need to include your customer service team, your warehouse team, your supply chain team, because they're all gonna have a say in this as well and the solution will touch each department

Tom Raftery:

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the digital supply chain podcast. The number one podcast, focusing on the digitization of supply chain. And I'm your host global vice-president at SAP Tom Raftery. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the digital supply chain podcast. My name is Tom Raftery with SAP and with me on the show today, I have my special guest Des. Des, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Des Frawley:

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Tom. I'm I'm delighted to be involved today. My own name is Desmond Frawley. I'm based here in Ireland, as you can hear. And I work for ReverseLogix and we are a returns management solution. We're based out of California, in the United States with our EU Headquarters based here in Ireland. So I'm in charge of heading up our European operation. We're seeing big growth and, we focus mainly on working with our, our clients on how to streamline our returns process through a number of different software solutions that we offer.

Tom Raftery:

Okay, fantastic. Now, just from my own online purchases in the last two years, more really, but more specifically in the last two years since COVID started everyone's online purchases have gone up and up and up, I think. And consequently, you know, things that you might not have considered buying online before, shoes, clothes in general, things like that. They're more likely to have returns associated with them. And so a lot of these companies who are now selling direct, who weren't before, I gotta think have to have some kind of RMS returns management system or solution as you call it in place. Right. And this is where you guys are jumping in and saying, oi, we can help.

Des Frawley:

Yeah, you're absolutely right. You know, some kind of quick stats there. Brick and mortar stores have about an 8% return rate online up to 30%. So three, four times nearly more online. And obviously it's just consumer behavior and it's something that's not going to really change. Okay. Consumers want to buy online more and more B2C are buy online, but B2B are now moving online as well, which I think it's estimated 18% of all B2B sales will be done online, this year. So you're seeing a lot more B2B sales online as well. And with that comes returns. And there's obviously key industries there. Apparel and fashion is gonna be the number one kind of returns industry there of people buying two shirts, instead of one, knowing that they're gonna return one. And that's a good example. There's people out there who are buying eight and returning you. Returning, you know, six of them at a time. And it's just an extra headache for retailers and it doesn't have to be anymore. And what our solution we say is we're the only end to end returns management system on the marketplace. What you'll find is a lot of point solutions that might do certain parts of the return, but what our solution actually do the full return optimization, meaning you can start a return and close out a return all within our software. So it's really trying to streamline it give the customer that, that journey they want. Another quick stat, 67% of consumers buying online are checking the returns tab before they make a purchase now. Okay. So returns are becoming a presale aspect of people's purchasing behavior, if they see a return system, that's gonna be tough for them to return an item, they're not gonna probably purchase it. And sometimes you speak to brands and e-commerce companies out there and say, well, if we make our returns difficult, maybe we won't get as many. And you say, yeah that could work, but you'll also lose a lot of customers. Okay. Because your competitors are offering much better return services. And it's a key driver for purchases now for consumers online. And you mentioned it. Across a whole different amount of industries, apparel and fashion, consumer electronics, home furnishings people now buying couches without even seeing them they're getting delivered to the house. They think it looks great online. They put it into the sitting room and the other half comes in and says get that outta here. You know? And it's, And it's trying to get that back. And if it's a tough process and if you spent quite a lot of money on something you expect to be able to return it in that return period.

Tom Raftery:

Yeah. And I mean, that was one of the key aspects of Amazon's success initially as well, wasn't it? They made returns easy. And so there was no risk associated with buying because you knew if anything went wrong. The returns process was dead simple and therefore zero risk. So I, I think that's gotta be a huge reason now why people are starting to buy more online because the returns process is for most organizations quite straightforward.

Des Frawley:

Yeah, exactly. And I suppose what we have to credit to Amazon is they set the standard for returns definitely, few years ago and a lot of companies out there when we're speaking say, Hey, we want to say, we want to be able to offer our customers that Amazon returns experience as well. We say to them as we can give you that we can enable that for you and we can even do it better. Okay. So there's a lot of things, I suppose people think about with returns is just Des buys this shirt and he needs to get it back to a retailer. Okay. There's a lot more that goes into it than that, because for the actual retailer themselves, they need stuff like smart routing built in. So our returns initiation module, which is the first module we offer allows a B2C customer to go online, click like a returns tab within the retailer e-commerce brands, web shop which will open up , on their website, it'll be fully branded for them. So it keeps that branded experience allows them to digitally return an item. But what it also allows them to do is start gathering reasons why these items are coming back. Okay. And something that we speak retailers and e-commerce brands outdoor a lot. They don't know why their items isn't coming back. And if you don't know, then you're paying a guessing game of how to reduce them, but with a digital platform and, and allowing that kind of digital service for consumers to have a better experience in return it, you can sound start gathering reasons. And you can also do smart routing, which is quite important. So if you could imagine, for example, I bought maybe a Leinster jersey up in Dublin, but I live down in Munster and I, bring it down to Munster and I go to return it in store. Now what that store, if I'm return it online. That shirt be better to go to the nearest store, to my location, you know, would it go to a Cork shop or a Limerick shop, or would it be better to go back up to Dublin area where it's probably gonna sell a lot quicker? Okay. More than likely. And that can be done by countrywise or down to SKU level of where does this item need to go? And that doesn't need to go directly back to store might go to a facility, one of your third party logistics companies, your own facility. Is it going for repair? There's lots of factors in it and it's about optimizing that. And we speak to a lot of brands and retailers out there who still have like customer service dealing with returns. So customer has to ring up or they have to email and they have to wait for an email back and then they have to wait for an RMA to be created and wait for a shipping label to be sent out. And. People are still sending return forms and boxes and it's just, you're like, how long is that taking the wasted cost in that the very poor customer experience in that side of things, so it's really cost them a lot of money and. We're an enterprise level solution, so we're typically speaking to companies that have a minimum 30,000 plus returns a year. But typically a lot of them would have a hundred thousand plus returns a year. So if you're thinking how many customer service agents you'd need to be working on a full time basis to just deal with a hundred thousand returns and manually doing it and manually entering it into an ERP system or a WMS system at the end of the day. We're saying, look, we can give you the solution there, digitalize everything, put that cost by 80% on the customer service side, let them focus on more important tasks and just trying to get the returns labels created and connected to carriers, et cetera. So there's a whole range just in that first module that starts that return. And we're able to enable that with and we do it with some of the biggest brands in the world.

Tom Raftery:

Okay. And I assume just from a technical perspective, it's cloud delivered, you integrate it using APIs to your own systems and it's all up and running in. I won't say in no time, but in short order.

Des Frawley:

Yeah, exactly. We let you know, we've been building our software since 2014. We're a full SaaS platform. We run on the Microsoft Azure platform. All our hosting and maintenance is all included in our solution to get up and running you're talking anywhere from 8 to 12 weeks to get it fully integrated. And yes, we've a lot of experience with integrations with like as SAP, Microsoft dynamics, Microsoft nav, netSuite as the ERPs, but also the WMS side of things the eCommerce kind of platforms, their shop via Magentos, WooCommerce, et etcetera. So when we speak to clients, they obviously have a host of different technologies. And even on the customer service side, they like to Zendesk fresh desk, you know, we've integrations with them typically via an API, but we can also do an SFTP. We can do a message bus EDI it depends on customers requirements. But what we say is what we're not saying, Hey, listen, rip everything out and then we replaces Reverse Logix. We're a plugin to your current solutions. Okay. We sit there so you can fully under one umbrella manage your full returns. What's happening across the world with every facility, with your returns, where the items are how you now know that. We're receiving 10,000 returns next week in our Denmark facility, you can now plan labor for that. You can now know what's happening, correct dispositions, et cetera. So yes we do a lot of connections in that area, full team of integrations and developers working within ReverseLogix. And we do all the heavy lifting on that side.

Tom Raftery:

Okay. And a lot of listeners to this podcast Des would be very familiar with forward logistics, but maybe not so familiar with the reverse logistics. Can you talk a little bit about what would be the key differences, the key challenges that people who have a full functioning forward logistics organization might have when they try and implement something in reverse logistics.

Des Frawley:

Yeah, absolutely. The first thing that comes mind, the return side things is more of a headache than fulfillment. Fulfillment is typically your pick, pack and ship. Okay. An order comes in, you grab it, whether it's a robot grabbing it these days, whether it's a human, grabbing that item. Packing it shipping it off. It goes a D P D a DHL comes along a couple times a day, selects the items off it goes. Okay. The return side is is more difficult because people don't forecast for it as much. Okay. So they're looking at, at our warehouse and a lot of people we speak to saying, well, we have our warehouse, this all fulfillment. We're like, where do you keep the returns? In a room over there, you know, that we've just created and what they try and do is they try and use a WMS system to manage the returns. Okay. But WMSs, aren't built for returns. They're built for more of, they're a warehouse management system, they're managing your full warehouse there and you have forward fulfillment services that are connected to different carriers. We know that the me backs the scurries, et cetera. And the biggest problem is on the return side, not having visibility of when items are coming. So we would speak to many clients out there who would say. They would just be working in their warehouse and a truckload of returns arrive, and they have no idea when to do it. They have not planned that in, you know, there's a lot of more issues with returns coming back because you're now giving it in the hands of the consumer to send this item back. So obviously of course we think that every consumer sends the correct item back and the correct quantity. That unfortunately doesn't happen.

Tom Raftery:

Correctly packed.

Des Frawley:

Exactly. They were supposed to send the item, but it didn't send the item. They're now contacting customer service, you know, if it's not digitally done through an RMS system. So there's lots of headaches there for the return side, but one of the biggest headaches to be perfectly honest is what happens when it gets to the facility. Okay. So the returns, initiation is everything was starting to return given the customer the best journey connections to carriers. So you can get the best shipping rates, reduce your carbon footprint. But now the item has arrived at the warehouse and this is their biggest issues. And this is where we work with a lot of the biggest 3PLs in the world okay. DHL, for example, FedEx use our solutions. It arrives at a warehouse and now it's okay. What do we do with this item now? And again, they might have, we, we were just at a facility recently, they're using Excel sheets and manually writing down what's in the box and No, actually, yeah. And we actually were kind of shocked and they put it the warehouse associate put that piece of paper in the drawer and we asked the question, what happens that piece of paper now? And he says, it'll never be seen again that kind of because, and it's true. You'd never be able to manage to have volume. Now, if you had, you know, a hundred returns a week. Absolutely. You could manage that without an RMS. Okay, or you'd need a very basic. Once you start getting a lot of returns in, you need a full solution to manage it. So our second module is our return to processing module. And the whole point of that module is to get you from processing your warehouse associate eight to 10 units per hour, up to 30 to 40 units per hour. Okay. And that's what you need to be able to do. You need to able process the items. And the main reason is. You want to get the items back into stock as quickly as possible. Okay. If there's nothing wrong with the item you wanna get 'em back into stock as quickly as possible. So you can resell them. You want, automatic grading, so our system will allow them to verify, inspect, and automatically grade items. Meaning there's workflows built into the SKU. Meaning if a shoe comes in, okay. If to check the tongue, you have to do a retag on it and you have to rebox it. The shoe. Okay. There are the special actions our software will open up when you scan that item and tell you exactly that particular SKU these are the items that need to be done to it. You check off the boxes, it'll then automatically grade and automatically disposition the item. So it'll say it's been retagged the item condition is perfect. So automatically it goes to a grade A, which means we restock it. But on the other hand, The next shoe comes in and it's oh we've done the special actions, but it's not in good shape. You know, the laces are a bit ripped, the tongue is a bit damaged. It goes to grade C and that means the disposition is we automatically sell it on a secondhand marketplace. We all, and you know, and it keeps going on like that and you can have as many different configurations you, as you want. And. Our main selling point is we give you your own instance of our solution, you can completely configure it in your own way for your own business. As you can imagine, consumer electronics is a lot different to apparel and fashion, is a lot different to, for home furniture. So you need to be able to configure items completely different and our solution allows you to do that while also giving you the full update of when items are coming, how long it's taken to process each item, what are the top returned items you have. Who's returning items the most outta your consumers? We see a lot of fraud. People taking advantage of returns. And it'll spot that, but it's really there to allow someone in the warehouse to process items as quickly as possible, no matter what the item is. Okay. And that's a big issue we saw was, well, we send the shoes to this part of the warehouse because they specialize in the shoes and we send the laptops to this part of that, like you don't have to do that anymore. The software will tell them exactly what needs to be done with every single item as it comes in. And it scanned, it opens up in a nice user friendly screen. It can be touch screen, it can be click and mouse. It hooks in with your WMS, to put the item back into, back away, put it away. So that's the kind of main difference in the returns versus the forward fulfillment. And for three PLS in particular they are obviously, heavily focused on forward fulfillment for their brands. That's their business, right? We do forward now they're realizing, okay. The returns is a massive headache. If you think of a three PL doing a hundred million, forward fulfillment items. Okay. The return rate now 30%. So there's 30 million items coming back outta those hundred million items that they don't even look at as a real business opportunity yet. So we're saying to him, you know, there's definitely low hanging fruit for you guys here in terms of. You're so heavily focused on forward fulfillment, which is very competitive market. Big brands can move a couple of cents, you know, here or there can move forward, fulfillment and use many. If you're doing the returns and the forward fulfillment for a brand. You're a lot stickier as a three PL okay. That brand's looking at you going where they're doing both for us. They're actually now be able to offer us the tech as well, to be able to monitor our returns and what's happening with them, they're processing them a lot quicker. So it's a whole new marketplace for those three PLS out there.

Tom Raftery:

Fantastic. Are there any particular industries that, can benefit more from this than others?

Des Frawley:

The ones I mentioned. Apparel and fashion is huge. A big part of apparel and fashion is sustainability at the moment. Okay. We cannot be sending clothes to landfill anymore. That's not what we want to do. We were speaking with a brand recently, a very well known brand worldwide global leader in apparel and fashion. And what they're actually looking at doing is they'll now take back any piece of clothing that was purchased from their their brand. Whether you bought it 15 years ago or two weeks ago, they'll take it back and they'll refurbish it now. Okay. That's what they'll do. So if you had this particular brand's t-shirt, that you bought 20 years ago, You send it back to these guys. They're gonna give you a coupon to buy a new t-shirt online. If you want to some sort of a voucher, they're gonna take that t-shirt and they're gonna use different parts of it. So it might be damaged, something that you might say that needs to go in the bin. They're saying no, we might be able to use different parts of that to refurbish it, to remake it, to use a different, threads in it to make other items out of it and resell them on a secondhand marketplace and that's becoming really big. And there's another shoe company we're speaking at the moment are doing a very similar thing taking in sneakers and they're even talking about taking in any brand of sneakers, not even their own, we'll take them back. We'll incentivize customers do it. We'll rework them, repurpose them and resell them. you know, and it's gonna become a big market. And one of my biggest predictions that I say is in two or three years time, majority of people will buy in their clothes secondhand online, that's a booming industry. And the audience is younger people, nowadays days are more aware of sustainability are more aware of the circular economy. And it's becoming important to them. So apparel and fashion definitely needs RMS in place. Consumer electronics, huge as well. And what you'll see with consumer electronics is they don't have the same amount of volume as apparel and fashion coming back. They still have about a 22% return rate okay. In consumer electronics. But they're much higher value. Okay. So like a laptop, et cetera, headphones that we're wearing now. So Jabra would be one of our one of our main customers out here in Europe. Unbelievably innovative company have great products, but they realize that they need to offer a much better returns experience for our consumers. And when they get back what they're able to do with those items. So consumer electronics really important and where you'll see consumer electronics a lot is our third module, which is our repairs module, which is we're the only provider in the world to offer such a solution, which is used by repair technicians. And you'll see that a lot in electronics where they're now there's a global shortage of parts, right? Everybody knows about the global shortage of parts and what's happening in China. And we can't get certain items. So the big companies in consumer electronics, whether it be kind of laptops, tablets, et cetera, now know we now need to keep our current stock, you know, and reuse that, we can't just scrap items anymore. We have to do parts harvesting. We have to use certain parts. We have to have better stock control, incentivize for things to come back and basically repair, repair, repair is all they're talking about at the moment. We do not want to be just sending new laptops out to people. We want to be able to repair items. We want to be able to sell again in secondhand make marketplaces. So there are two main industries, but there's so many, you come across jewelry, luxury watches. Again, if you bought a watch for a couple of thousand euros, Tom, I think you'd expect a good returns if you need get it back. And more importantly, what we see is a lot of in warranty items. Okay. You buy a high end good for 3000-4000 euros. You typically get a two or three year warranty with that okay. That's where these kind of luxury brands are seen after two years. Something's wrong with it. It's in warranty. Tom needs to be able to send this back, we need to be able to repair it. At the moment Tom has to ring customer service and we have to send out a box. He has to put it in the box and as we sent off, and then Tom has no idea what's happening the watch where it is when to expect the back. An RMS system will now fix all that. Tom can now digitally return that item to us. It'll automatically tell us that it's in warranty and let Tom knows in warranty it, when it gets towards the our facility, Tom will be updated. That it we've received the watch. He'll get updates that we're working on it, what we're doing with it. Flip that to its outta warranty. They might say we'll still repair your watch, but you're now gonna have to pay for it, Tom. Same journey. You can still send it back, but now you're gonna get a quote from them. They can digitally do that quote through our system where they can send you the quote based on the parts needed for the watch when they drag in those parts saying, we need a new ticker, we need a new battery. It'll come in. It'll quote that it'll send that quote to you, Tom, where you can then pay. Where we would be integrated with a Stripe or a PayPal and off it goes, and just a much smoother journey for you. But also quickens the whole process of, for that retailer the brand owner of that particular jewelry piece.

Tom Raftery:

And just to clarify, there is no way I'd ever contemplate spending three or four grand on a watch.

Des Frawley:

I agree. I agree. I agree. Yeah. But there's many who people love them. And you know, even if it's watches what about an engagement ring? What about, you know, we work with one of the biggest luggage luxury luggage brands in the world. Okay. They've got seven brands underneath them. You wouldn't think that luggage would have many returns, but you know, their high end suitcase, they sell they're in warranty, they need to be repaired. Suitcases are like break quite a lot. Your handle breaks your, you know, cracks. If you buy a high end suitcase and spend quite a lot of money, they now have an unbelievable return system for their consumers. And they see a, a growth in their net profit due to that, they see 25% to extra customer satisfaction. But one thing that we do get across at RMS is a lot of people say, how much does it cost us? It's not really how much it costs you when you talk to us. We'll get your figures from me, how many returns you're currently doing? We're able to break down actually with an RMS system. You're saving money. Like you're saving hundreds of thousands a year by having the system in terms of labor, in terms of processing items quicker, in terms of more business intelligence, be able to make data driven decisions. And we do a full all ROI for you saying, listen, Based on your figures, this is how much money you can save by implementing such, such a software. And that luggage brand that we work with, what they used to do was send all of their items back to one centralized returns facility. So Des is returning suitcase from Ireland end and Tom you're returning one from Spain. They were both going to Netherlands. Okay. Which doesn't make much sense because you know, uh, a longer journey, more shipping costs, carbon footprint, not great, what we're able to do with our software attract over 400 authorized service centers, which would be small mom and pop kind of shops that do repairs. They were able to give them our solutions role based access to our solutions so that they could actually log in and repair the suitcase in there. So now instead of Des' suitcase going to the Netherlands. It's going to a smaller repair center. That's run on our solution in, within Ireland. And Tom's one within Spain. It's cutting out those journeys and it's definitely getting the item back to us a lot quicker as well. So there's many different possibilities you can do. And once we speak to clients, we're able to give our recommendation we're experts in the reverse side of things say, listen, this is how we will set everything up for you guys. And through software and through automation you can make the journey a lot better and a lot more profitable for you.

Tom Raftery:

Okay. And where to from here?

Des Frawley:

I think where to from here, you know, RMS is still quite new and we speak to a lot of people out there and they're still, I never knew this existed, you know, we get that so much. And like, yeah, it does. You know, and a lot of them not saying, I'm trying to our own horn too much, but a lot of 'em say like, I've been looking for something like this for years and never really found it, you know, we, and the big thing, it's an end to end system. Okay. It's not point. So you don't have to, there is competitors out there who offer like point solutions who might offer one little part of the returns journey. And that's tricky because you're like, oh, it's great. We can start a return, but what happens when it gets to the facility? Now we have to use something else. Where our solution just use under one umbrella, I think RMSs are becoming more and more popular. Okay. That's where things are going more and more. And it's typically the bigger brands the world leaders are knowing, okay, we need this in place. And if you think of 20 years ago, okay. You could have used, uh, an SAP to run everything, run the whole business under SAP umbrella. But then what happened was speciality, softwares come out in their own sectors. So CRM come out like Salesforce. Okay. And people tagged on Salesforce, SAP, and we would specialize our CRM within Salesforce. Then WMS has come out like your blue honors you're Manhattans. So people now use them. They still use SAP as the hub, the center hub, but they have all these add-ons that are, you know, niche add-ons that are specialized in that area. So you have RMSs WMSs CRMs, etcetera, et cetera.

Tom Raftery:

Now, just to clarify in SAP, we also have CRM and WMS solutions too. Just

Des Frawley:

Of course, of course, you know, I know. And I know that absolutely, of course you do. And I suppose, but what's really good is, you know, people can choose. They don't have to go that just sticking that umbrella. There's, it's only different integrations these days. And not just SAP, they like the net suite, Microsoft nav is similar in terms of like, you can now have. A lot of niche products underneath it that can and your EERP is obviously your, the heart of the business, but you can have these specialized solutions. So our RMSs sit there as a plugin and plug in for those ERPs for the WMSs, specialised in returns. And I think where we are now and particular in Europe versus our, our United States market. Is people are now really learning more about RMSs and really more interested in it. They know that it's very important, not just for the consumers, but for them as a business to have this, solution, to be able to manage returns in a much more efficient way, because returns aren't a number they're normally percentage. Okay. So the more sales you make, the more returns you're gonna have. Okay. With RMS solutions, they'll actually, they will decrease your returns as well. Cause they'll stop the return when they're happening, if people are outside the returns policy and they put in their order number, it'll tell them their outside the returns policy, so you're not getting that item back, you know, What's massive at the moment is buy online, returning instore, you know, Ireland in particular is really popular market for that, where we think we buy it online. We're going back to that store and we're returning it. Okay. and they need a solution for that. And typically what they're using is like a POS system, which isn't built for returns. It doesn't talk to their other system. So, we have an RMS system there where they can use our app within store to return the item when the customer comes instant crediting, et cetera, things that are important.

Tom Raftery:

Very good. Very good. Very good. We're coming to the end of the podcast now, Des. Is there any question that I haven't asked that you wish I had, or any aspect of this we've not touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of?

Des Frawley:

To be honest, number one thing is just learning more about the reverse logistics of things and how important it's for your business. Okay. Also I suppose a lot of people think with logistics reverse, okay. The person who's gonna be most interested is you know, the vice president of supply chain, the director of supply chain, but it's not, there's actually many different sectors within the company that are affected by returns. So you take customer service, like I mentioned at the start they're affected by returns. Okay. So. Who would be really important there would be the vice president of customer service, the head of customer service would be very interested in the returns management system. Why? Because it'll cut out their customer service time spent on returns. Okay. Cut down their cost on that. So that's the first sector. Second sector is your e-commerce and marketing team. Okay. They want a better experience for your consumer. So they're very interested in. That returns journey online for their end consumer. How can we make that as slick as possible? How can we increase our customer satisfaction, increase our customer retention. We can actually do tailored adverts, cross marketing on the return section. So, you know, their returning item, can they exchange in the state? Can we cross market different items to them? Can they upgrade items? So e-commerce and marketing division. Vice presidents of them director level at that stage are very important. Obviously, your supply chain department are gonna be heavily involved in this as well as a whole. Okay. With this is our system, your warehouse manager. Okay. Who's running that warehouse. How do I get more efficient in that? Like our solution will fit into that. If we can process items quicker, we can grade it's nicer to look at. We can offer our consumers, our, our end consumer better visibility on what's happening with returns at all times, for reasons why it's coming in, how quick we are, we can train staff quicker. There's labor shortage at the moment. So the more automation we can do with returns is better, you know, and then you have your C level. So there's lots of actually different departments that are interested in returns and what it can do for them. And we try and get that message across when we're speaking to you know just the e-commerce team we're like, well, you need to include your customer service team, your warehouse team, your supply chain team, because they're all gonna have a say in this as well. And the solution will touch each department. Okay. Whereas the forward side is typically just the warehouse. We're looking at the forward. So we wanna get it out there as quickly as possible, you know, pick, pack, and ship. So yeah, the message we just wanna get out there is. RMS is still relatively new. It's growing. It's gonna be here for a long time. We're a well backed funded company. We did our series a last year, 20 million in investment we're tripled head growth in the last 12 months. We work with typically the biggest brands in the world. If you go on to our website and check out who we currently work with. You'll see some huge names there and we're adding some huge names every month at the moment. So we're very busy, but we're interested in talking to 'em in particular, me companies out in Europe who are interested in just learning more about RMS systems and that's all we typically do. We typically just have a discovery call. We'll determine, look at whether an RMS system like ourselves, an enterprise level solution would be the right way for you to go. And often we say, listen, maybe it's not because you know, you don't have that volume at the moment. But we're more of a consultant type sale where we will do our discovery call. We'll show you a full demo. We'll do a technical and workflow analysis. We'll do an ROI analysis. So it's a long process to get to this is how we believe it would work for you and like I mentioned before, you do get your own instance, so you can be completely set up in the way you want to set up your workflows. You can configure it in the background yourself. You're not highly dependent on us. It's like having your own built software for you. So yeah, the messages RMS are hopefully here to stay and grow. And we're looking to speak to anyone who's interested in learning more. Just to show you a 30 minute discovery call go into a bit more detail about your business.

Tom Raftery:

Great. So on that note, if people do want to know more Des where would you have me direct them?

Des Frawley:

Yeah, they can actually give me an email directly d.frawley@reverselogix.com and they can hit our website, reverselogix.com. Check out our contact page. We have lots of blogs there, lots of white papers there. That'll give them more information if they want to just start off slow, they can sign up to our newsletter where we feed certain information. They can also give me a call directly, which our number of our EU Headquarters is on our website. And we are a global business. So we obviously do a lot of business in the United States, in the APAC regions as well with a full development center out in India with over 150 employees at the moment. So yeah, feel free to reach out to me, hit me up on LinkedIn. Anyway, you wanna get in touch with me? Just let me know. And we can set up that initial call where. Similar to today, we'll just have a kind of discussion about what's happening with their current business and returns and what it could like and what we call it. The realm of possibility is what we wanna show them, what it could be for you, for investing in an RMS system.

Tom Raftery:

Fantastic Des that's been really fascinating. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Des Frawley:

Great, Tom, I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Yeah and look forward to speaking to anyone who wants to speak further.

Tom Raftery:

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about digital supply chains, head on over to sap.com/digital supply chain, or, or simply drop me an email to Tom dot Raftery @sap.com. If you like the show, please, don't forget to subscribe to it in your podcast application at choice to get new episodes, as soon as they are published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks, catch you all next time.

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