Marlow: NetDespatch recognised as one of the UK’s top cloud technology companies

NetDespatch, a leading supplier of IT integration solutions for customers of postal and parcel carriers, has been recognised as one of the top cloud technology businesses in the UK. The Marlow-based company is one of 20 independently-owned companies to make the final of Cloudex 20:20 following a search led by advisory firm Clearwater Corporate Finance. The award was launched in 2013 to find the top UK cloud companies with a panel of industry experts assessing factors such as growth prospects, innovation and global competitiveness.

With the boom worldwide in ecommerce and in particular online shopping, the demand for postal and parcel services is expanding rapidly. With the NetDespatch Software as a Service (SaaS) platform postal and parcel carriers worldwide can integrate their services with customers and each other. For retailers, manufacturers and anyone else using postal and parcel services, NetDespatch provides connection with carriers, automating booking, parcel label printing and tracking to greatly simplify and speed shipping.

The company first introduced its SaaS model back in 1999 and the drive for seamless integration and automation within the post and parcels sector, and the introduction of business class broadband, has seen the company go from strength to strength.

Over the past few years NetDespatch has grown to become a global market leader in the supply of internet-based IT integration solutions. The platform not only provides applications but a full web service underpinning hundreds of millions of ecommerce collection and delivery related transactions per year. The model is based on the carrier being billed on a pay-per-consignment transaction model, and the shipper being able to use the software free of charge as part of their contract with the carrier.

The Cloudex 20:20 panel comprised serial technology entrepreneur and chairman Neville Davis; Steve Garnett, European chairman of Salesforce.com, the world’s leading cloud computing business; Stephen Warshaw, portfolio director at TMT specialist investor HgCapital; Angela Eager of TechMarketView; and Emma Rodgers, director of TMT market intelligence at Clearwater.

Clearwater launched Cloudex 20:20 earlier this year in a bid to find the UK’s leading independently-owned cloud businesses. The advisory firm, which has a specialist TMT sector team, set up the Cloudex Index in 2010, which tracks the fortunes of about 100 international listed and private software, services, hardware and infrastructure businesses.