A £8M ARR UK wholesale distributor was stuck in 1990s operations — fax orders, spreadsheet stock checks, phone-call status updates. SpiderHunts replaced four full-time roles of manual work with an end-to-end automation platform: order intake from email/web/EDI/WhatsApp, real-time inventory allocation, smart dispatch routing, automated payments via Stripe, and live customer tracking. Order-to-delivery time fell from 3.5 days to 18 hours, errors dropped 93%, and the £12,500 build paid back in 4 months.
Project Snapshot
Sterling Wholesale Group (anonymised) is a Manchester-based £8M ARR B2B distributor supplying retailers across Northern England. Orders came in via fax, email, and phone. Stock was checked manually against spreadsheets. Order confirmations were typed individually. Delivery scheduling required a series of phone calls. Customers chased status daily.
Sterling Wholesale Group (anonymised) is a Manchester-based £8M ARR B2B distributor supplying retailers across Northern England. Orders came in via fax, email, and phone. Stock was checked manually against spreadsheets. Order confirmations were typed individually. Delivery scheduling required a series of phone calls. Customers chased status daily.
Before SpiderHunts
After SpiderHunts
SpiderHunts designed and built a unified Order-to-Delivery Automation Platform tying together every step from order intake to delivery confirmation. The platform sits on top of their existing Sage accounting system, so finance workflows were preserved while operations were fully transformed.
01
AI-powered email parser, web order form, EDI from key accounts, WhatsApp Business API — every channel flows into a single normalised order pipeline.
02
Automatic stock check against live inventory; out-of-stock SKUs auto-suggest substitutes or trigger purchase orders.
03
Stripe invoice generation; existing customer credit terms applied automatically; failed payments routed to credit control.
04
Algorithmic assignment of warehouse and courier (Royal Mail, DPD, in-house van) based on destination, weight, and urgency.
05
Live status updates, ETAs, and signature capture — all branded and embedded in their existing customer login.
06
SMS, email, and WhatsApp updates triggered at every stage (received, picked, dispatched, out for delivery, delivered).
07
Courier scan and proof-of-delivery photos pulled back into the order record and the customer portal automatically.
08
All transactions auto-reconciled in Sage; finance team sees outstanding invoices and matched payments in a unified dashboard.
Production-grade components selected for reliability, observability, and ease of handover.
Numbers measured 3 months post-launch versus the same period the previous year.
The biggest competitive advantage we have added in 15 years. Our customers think we doubled in size — we just stopped wasting time on manual work.
— Operations Director, UK Wholesale Distributor (anonymised)
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