This is intended to give a brief insight into our company background, and convey the influences, principles and experience that have been formative in our development.
Richard Slater, System Red Limited

System Red began in June 1995, servicing the needs of one customer, Pacemaker Distribution Ltd. Some six years prior to this I was employed by Pacemaker, then a small general haulage company, as their Distribution and Administration Manager.

With the encouragement of the directors, I began to write a variety of database applications to enhance the capabilities and capacity of a number of divisions within the company. Some of these applications further developed into useful tools enabling swifter customer response times and extended service levels.

The requirement for this was nowhere more noticeable than in the area of ‘Overnight Parcels’. At Pacemaker we participated in three Carrier systems (Track 29, Hellmann, and National Courier Network) to achieve the varied service requirements of our customers. Each Carrier had varying methods and levels of computerised input, and distinctly different operation practices. None could encompass the operational functionality, or the reporting facilities that we wished to provide for our customers.

Pacemaker became a growing Distribution company with an annual turnover approaching £10 million. Their directors will acknowledge that this growth was largely enabled and aided by deployment of their computerised systems. This led me to believe that there was a market for the provision of a comprehensive overnight software system to the industry.

In 1995 the biggest single input depot into the Hellmann Parcel System was Pacemaker Distribution. In 2003, this feat was achieved by YDL Distribution and Logistics. As with Pacemaker, YDL Distribution and Logistics are also a customer of System Red Limited.

In June 1999 when Hellmann Parcel Systems adopted Barcode labelling, we were the only third party software vendor able to follow suite and recreate the same barcode file structures and format. Fully A.N.A ( Article Number Association http://ana.org.uk/ ) compliant, conforming to the EAN-128 code.

This code is a world wide recognised format for the freight industry. We therefore continued to supply full Depot, and Depot Customer (Implant) software systems for many of the Hellmann depots, and Hellmann group companies.

The development of our overnight software has been ongoing ever since, driven by our own ideas and knowledge of the distribution industry, the experience and demands of our clients, and the requirements of their customers.


Company Today

From humble beginnings in Road Haulage, 'Dailys', 'Multi-drop', 'TIR', System Red has accumulated many years of knowledge of the Freight Industry and participated in its evolution. Overnight deliveries, time-specific international parcels, and letterpost are now industry wide services.

Much has changed with the technology required to empower those haulage companies, that they may offer an expanding choice of services and value added products to their customer base. The availability of optical scanning of goods, electronic notification of progress, web available information, are all now presumed by the technologically aware customer.

Three years ago we went back to square one, to design from the ground up a Freight Consignment System that would embrace all that we knew for operating a successful Overnight Distribution Business. UFCS (Unified Freight Consignment System) has been written using world leading products from Microsoft, developed in partnership with specialist consultants, in order that you can take total control of your Overnight business.


Axiom

In the '80s if you had heard of 'Microsoft' you might have thought it was a new soap powder. The memory of an England World Cup win wasn't too distant, and moving freight around the United Kingdom was achieved by a multitude of Haulage companies delivering in their locality, with a framework of arrangements to get goods delivered further afield.

The advent of faster consumer demand, better road networks, communications and the computer, brought about the emergence of Nationwide Delivery Carriers.

As the brand names of these Nationwide carriers become known and established, the potential customer may move from one brand carrier to another, dependant on their satisfaction with the service they receive. We know that that level of service is not only dependant on the depot looking after that customer, but the performance of the Carriers hub and other delivery depots around the country. If you are a local depot tied to one National Carrier this is just a fact of life.

Transport and Distribution companies who are independent of any one National Carrier, offering a broader portfolio of products and services to the market, may prefer the customer to identify their name as the supplier or service provider. Placing their company name in prime position and association, rather than the brand of any national carrier.

People like to buy from people they can hold to account. This is no more apparent than in the turn around in policy of the clearing banks in the last few years. When you couldn't contact your banks local branch to resolve an issue, but were routed to a 'Call Centre' to speak to someone you didn't know (sometimes in some unknown country), or your local branch had been closed down, customers pressure forced them to halt or reverse these policies.

Everyone can now offer national or international deliveries. If you are an independent distribution operation you can also offer local personal accountability and service. The final trick is to provide your customers a broad range of distribution services and products, beyond that of any one National Carrier. This is where our 'Unified Freight Consignment System' comes in to it's own.


Development tools

All our products have been developed using the latest tools from leading software houses, including: