The Houndit delivery system is flexible, fully featured and designed to provide control and security for any delivery business - be it a same day or next day consignment company, an international freight organisation requiring customs capabilities, a specialist delivery organisation offering very specific customer services or a post office organisation.

The standard system incorporates most common tasks; however a wide range of extensions can also be offered to include automated communications, mapping and route data, payment processing and a comprehensive returns/exchanges feature set.

The Houndit system is a proven platform, already supporting many thousands of delivery operatives in the field, plus several hundred in-depot staff across many sites and in diverse delivery organisations. The Houndit platform provides a total solution for pre-advice, cross-docking and sortation, and a comprehensive on-the-road system providing real time POD, full traceability and exception handling.

The Houndit solution is also unique in that it is designed to handle multiple partners, capable of consolidating deliveries from multiple partners (even with a single signature if required), plus reporting to multiple back-end systems.

Fully functional interfaces already exist to many of the major UK carrier partners with the addition of a default system GS1-compliant XML interface.

Houndit has a multiple language capability, based on individual log on and can even cope with double bite character sets.

Receipting

Receipting marks the start of an item’s journey through the system. Daily reports show all items receipted both from external Business Partners and internally between depots.

As items are received into the depot, they can be allocated to a Business Partner either automatically - data feed or using defined barcode ranges - or simply by tagging the items as they are receipted.

Sorting/put away

The system can track where items have been placed and for how long, ideal if you operate a storage facility, or if your trip schedule mean items need to be kept for a period of time.

Flexible definition and classification (e.g. ‘damaged’, ‘over sized’). These can then form part of your picking process before the delivery trips are built.

Building Trips

Delivery trips can be built by the deliverer or by others. There are flexible definitions for the delivery sequence and opportunities to group items together (e.g. from different Business Partners or Suppliers) so that only one signature is required.

Trips can be reviewed and balanced then published onto a PDA or processed manually with a printed manifest

Delivery

The delivery driver has an electronic manifest on the PDA that shows the work left and the order it should be processed in. They can record notes or events against any item at any time. These events are available immediately in the central system and are displayed in the POD enquiry screen.

The delivery process is fast and efficient, allowing first time deliveries to be processed quickly and providing excellent doorstep experience for the consumer. Any exceptions are recorded and are available immediately on the central system.

Consumers sign for the items and this signature image is also immediately visible centrally

Consumer Pickup

Consumer pickups (either from card left delivery attempts or by agreement) are handled on in-depot PDAs, capturing a signature and audit point as the consumer takes delivery.

Reporting

Daily operational reports show volumes as they move through the system. It is possible to manually complete deliveries if electronic confirmation was not received.

Where Business Partner interfaces are in place, the system will automatically update the Partner’s systems for defined tracking events.