"The logistics sector clearly lacks what has long been standard in payment transactions or online advertising: an integrative platform that offers easy access to a wide range of different service providers and at the same time develops optimization services that would be too costly for individual retailers and logistics providers," says Felix Ostwald, describing the solution that is intended to make it much easier to connect fulfilment service providers to e-commerce retailers.

The co-founder and managing director founded Codept together with his partner Jonas Grunwald. But not alone. The two receive support from the Berlin-based self-sufficient company builder Beam - a spin-off from Beumer. "We try to solve major problems in logistics together with start-up teams," explains Managing Director Robert Bach. "My job is to find young companies with business ideas that are relevant to us or to help them set up. To this end, we want to create three start-ups per year and transfer them to a separate company under the umbrella of Beam - like Codept." The aim is to open up new business areas in logistics with these companies.

Programming interfaces simplify
The idea arose from an acute experience. "Fulfillment providers often lose potential customers because they lack the resources for IT integration or the initial costs are too high," explains Jonas Grunwald. "We simplify the programming interfaces of our customers' systems considerably so that they can concentrate fully on their core business." This is becoming increasingly important, particularly due to growing internationalization. E-commerce retailers increasingly need to be able to send goods to France, Italy or the Netherlands.

Large online retailers such as Amazon or Zalando can do this within 24 to 48 hours. If a medium-sized company cannot achieve this today, it will quickly lose potential customers. To meet this standard, they not only need warehouse locations here in Germany, but also in other European countries. "Integrating the operators into your own system landscape used to be extremely time-consuming," says Felix Ostwald from his own experience.

For example, if a retailer needs five logistics service providers for storage, packaging, delivery or processing returns, it must set up five interfaces. A programmer is required for at least a month on both the retailer's and the respective service provider's side. That takes time and is expensive. "With our new logistics platform, we offer homogeneous interface and reliable data management," promises Grunwald. "We take this connection off the customer's hands. A new partner can be integrated into the customer's system very quickly and easily via our platform without any additional effort."

The platform is availableat
With the new logistics platform, retailers can now easily expand their business and respond to increasing internationalization. Codept (codept.de) will also give them access to a wide range of logistics service providers in the future. "If a company needs a warehouse in northern Spain, for example, we will be able to recommend suitable partners based on our constantly growing experience and data," promises Felix Ostwald.

The platform offers another important advantage for warehouse operators: as several retailers can be connected, the service provider can better manage its warehouse space and react to seasonal fluctuations. Why? E-commerce business is particularly strong at Christmas and Easter. In summer, on the other hand, people store less online. This means that storage areas tend to be full in winter and empty in summer. "If the operator integrates several different retailers, they can make better use of the space. This is because the cycles are not identical everywhere; bicycles, for example, are sold less in the run-up to Christmas, whereas games consoles are sold more - in summer it's the other way around." as