Exel Direct makes sure it delivers
By Larry Thomas -- Furniture Today, February 1, 2010
WESTERVILLE, Ohio —
Most people in the furniture industry have never heard of the far-flung company David Vieira oversees from this Columbus suburb, and Vieira is comfortable with that — up to a point.
Vieira, the president of Exel Direct, a 40-year-old home and business delivery service, is eager to explain how the company makes tens of thousands of deliveries a year without a hitch. But he also realizes Exel will never come close to having the name recognition of the labels on many of the products it delivers.
“The only time our name comes up is when something goes wrong,” he quipped.
And he's very comfortable saying that, because he's confident nothing will go wrong with the overwhelming majority of Exel's deliveries.
“Our whole philosophy is built around doing it right the first time,” Vieira said. “It's all about quality.”
And since the supply chain starts in Asia for most of the furniture, appliance and electronics retailers that make up the company's customer base, finding ways to compress the chain and get the merchandise to the consumer's home quickly is a key to success.
“We can speed up the supply chain in ways that nobody else can,” he said.
Vieira says Exel Direct can do that by utilizing a network of about 140 regional hubs, warehouses and delivery centers to coordinate the thousands of incoming shipments and outgoing deliveries it handles every day.
In some cases, Exel employees wear uniforms and use delivery vehicles with the logo of the retailer where the consumer purchased the items being delivered. But in every instance, delivery is scheduled in a two-hour window, which sometimes presents special challenges for Exel's schedulers, but offers a minimum of inconvenience for the consumer, Vieira said.
And when a delivery is made smoothly and on time by courteous, knowledgeable employees, it enhances the retailer's reputation and increases the likelihood for repeat business from the satisfied consumer.
“We are an extension of our customers' brands,” said Vieira. “In many cases, the consumer doesn't know — and probably doesn't care — that our drivers are not employees of (the retailer.) She just wants things delivered on time and in perfect condition.”
Exel Direct offers several levels of service, from a simple “over the threshold” delivery, where the merchandise is placed inside the front door of the consumer's home, to the more popular, all-inclusive “white glove” delivery.
With white glove service, the delivery team unpacks, assembles and installs the merchandise, and removes packing materials. In some cases, usually when a major appliance or mattress is delivered, the old product also is hauled away.
But Vieira says the delivery process actually starts long before the driver leaves the warehouse. And the nerve center for these activities is in Westerville at the company's delivery service center, or DSC in logistics parlance.
At the center, about 85 employees handle scheduling, routing, billing and related client services for Exel Direct's entire delivery system, including several agents who work under contract for deliveries in less populated areas.
The DSC is open six days a week from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. and handles 18,000 inbound and outbound calls in a typical week.
Once the delivery is scheduled, other employees use complex software to plan the best routes for each driver, taking into account factors such as weather and traffic conditions, population density and road closings. (A typical driver with furniture will make 13 to 15 deliveries per day.)
The consumer is then called the night before the delivery to confirm the scheduled time, and the driver calls again as he is en route from his previous stop.
“Our GPS systems give us real-time tracking of deliveries, so we know where our drivers are at any given time,” said Vieira.
And what happens in those rare instances where a delivery can't be made within the promised two-hour window? He said the answer is communication.
“Having a delivery failure and not notifying the customer is tantamount to death,” Vieira quipped.
But the lack of delivery failures is just one of the reasons Vieira believes Exel Direct is well-positioned for growth once the current economic funk ends.
He said cost-conscious retailers appear eager to hire a company such as Exel to handle deliveries and avoid maintaining expensive fleets of trucks and drivers.
“The opportunities for us are just tremendous,” he said. “Taking entire steps out of the supply chain can have such a dramatic effect on (a retailer's) delivery service.”
In addition to adding to its retail customer base, the company last spring formed a partnership with Zenith Global Logistics, which specializes in logistics services for the furniture industry.
Under terms of the partnership, Exel Direct will provide so-called “last mile” home delivery services for a variety of products handled by Zenith. The two have developed a proprietary Web-based rate quote system that allows Zenith to give a customer a single shipping price even if the piece is handled by both Zenith and Exel.
“We have customers right now who ship straight from China to the consumer's home,” said Zenith President Jack Hawn. “This allows us to shorten the supply chain … and get the product in the consumer's hands faster.”
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