Those selected receive mentorship from Wincanton’s senior management, with the chance to trial their solution in a live environment.
“eCommerce growth is increasing pressure on warehouse operations. Our goal is to bring more productivity so that logistics players can manage more orders with the same resources.”
Arthur Guelton, Cofounder, Find & Order
W² Labs is fundamental to Wincanton’s ambition to deliver truly innovative supply chain solutions. The programme was open to early-stage businesses and is designed to discover emerging ideas and to tackle some of the industry’s toughest challenges. One of the focuses of this year’s Labs was digital fulfilment. Paris-based, Find & Order was one of three chosen from this category.
Find & Order uses its interactive mapping editor and algorithms to optimise picking operations in warehouses and stores, achieving up to 20% improvement in efficiency in product collection.
We spoke with Arthur Guelton, Cofounder, who talked to us about the business’s approach to innovation and what attracted them to collaborate with Wincanton.
Through your innovation, what problems do you want to solve?
eCommerce growth is increasing pressure on warehouse operations. Our goal is to bring more productivity so that logistics players can manage more orders with the same resources.
Tell us about your journey to develop your product.
Find & Order first developed an interactive mapping solution to orient people in large buildings. By adding algorithms, the solution became a much more strategic and ROI-focused tool for operations. Therefore, in 2020 we decided to focus on logistics and retail.
Why did you choose to partner with Wincanton?
For us, Wincanton is the opportunity to work with a market leader in the UK. With over 170 sites and a strong will to challenge its operations, we knew it was the right time to apply for the W² Labs.
What was the biggest challenge in developing your solution?
It was challenging to develop a universal solution which is able to combine modelling and algorithms for any client and configuration.
Tell us about your team.
The team encompasses four skilled software engineers and three PhDs in data science, maths and physics. They are led by two complementary cofounders who manage business and product developments.
Why do you feel innovation is important in today’s supply chain and logistics industry?
Fast evolving competition, economic and political contexts require an adaptable supply chain that can deal with radical changes. Continuous innovation will help organisations perform, despite these brutal challenges.
How are you hoping to work with the mentors?
The more they challenge us and our solution the more they will help us make it relevant. We expect detailed conversations on use cases, operations rules and IT environment.
What do you do to improve your creativity, innovation and problem-solving skills?
We try to make every client issue unique to keep learning from our market. But we also maintain a consistent scope by focusing on the use cases we can address with our tech skills and know how.
What previous innovation inspires you? Tell us about a specific product.
The story of Captain Train [the European arm of Trainline Europe's leading train and coach app] is quite inspiring, a train ticket booking platform acquired by a British firm for 160 million euros. It was completely against everybody’s intuition to think that this was a great idea. One monopolistic platform already existed, provided by the national railway company (SNCF) and it was working fine. But this company proved that if you really dig in and try to understand the experience of the end-user and the many little different customer pain points, you can bring a huge value.
What do you think makes a successful innovation partnership?
Concrete realisations, regular meetings with operations, listening skills, trust and time!
What’s your long-term vision for your product?
Our goal is to be an international and unmissable solution in logistics and retail when it comes to complex flow and algorithmic optimisation.
