Within the high-volume world of on-line retail, the stakes are excessive with regards to guaranteeing seamless logistics. One misplaced parcel or a delayed supply can tarnish a model’s status and burden operations with pricey claims and pissed off clients. For Thomann, a German high-volume on-line music retailer, fixing this problem has been central to supporting its fast development and protecting buyer satisfaction excessive.
Thomann is a household enterprise, based in 1954 and headquartered in Treppendorf, Germany. It began on-line gross sales as early as 1996. In 2024 alone, the corporate recorded gross sales of round 1.5 billion euros and shipped merchandise to greater than 160 nations. Since then, it’s Europe’s largest on-line vendor of musical devices.
A brand new period in logistics
Behind this success lies a strong logistics infrastructure – and more and more, sensible digital options that deal with operational friction. “We presently have a cargo quantity of 6.8 million parcels, and the development is rising”, says Daniel Lauerer, Lead Transport Supervisor at Thomann. “To keep away from rising the declare processing effort with the variety of orders, we would have liked an improved overview and structured processes.”
That’s the place declare.me got here in. Since fall 2024, Thomann has considerably optimized its claims administration processes with the assistance of this sensible instrument powered by Seven Senders. The outcomes: streamlined processes, improved knowledge transparency, and a scalable system that retains up with rising cargo volumes.
From DDP to knowledge: A longstanding partnership evolves
Thomann’s relationship with Seven Senders started in 2018, when the corporate sought assist navigating DDP (Delivered Responsibility Paid) delivery for Switzerland and the UK – two key however logistically complicated markets. Since then, parcel quantity to those nations has surged, with Switzerland seeing gross sales development virtually quadrupled since 2018 and the UK up 25 p.c between 2020 and 2024.
Declare.me helps Thomann in some of the operationally difficult areas of ecommerce: claims.
The issue was clear. Every service had its personal distinctive declare processes, portals, and necessities. For a enterprise working at Thomann’s scale, this fragmentation was unsustainable. “We needed to eliminate totally different processes on the numerous carriers”, Lauerer explains.
‘Declare.me: one system for all carriers‘
In November 2024, Thomann started piloting declare.me for DHL shipments in Germany. Inside months, the answer was totally built-in throughout its operations, consolidating all claims administration right into a single, standardized interface.
With declare.me, Thomann’s logistics workforce not has to navigate a maze of carrier-specific kinds, portals, and e-mail templates. All the pieces – from declare submission to standing monitoring and appeals – is dealt with in a single unified system.
‘We now solely work from a single system’
“We will reply queries from carriers by way of the portal, view the standing of claims at any time, and, if needed, lodge an objection straight”, says Lauerer. “We now solely work from a single system. The parcel service supplier continues to pay out accepted claims on to us.”
This simplification has had a measurable impression. With between 15,000 and 20,000 claims anticipated yearly, automation and centralized knowledge have considerably diminished handbook work and coaching wants – whereas rising the workforce’s capability to reply shortly and intelligently.
From firefighting to forecasting
“Claims administration is a crucial lever for bettering issues, each when it comes to course of effectivity and knowledge transparency”, says Lauerer. Slightly than firefighting points, declare.me permits the Thomann workforce to detect patterns, optimize workflows, and in the end stop future issues.
And there may be actual cash at stake. In response to declare.me’s evaluation, three in each 1,000 parcels trigger points, and 50 p.c of these are eligible for reimbursement. At scale, these numbers matter: for each a million parcels, as much as 150,000 euros in refunds may very well be recovered. For a corporation delivery practically 7 million parcels a 12 months, the monetary upside is substantial.
Scaling well with automation
As Thomann continues to develop, scaling operations intelligently turns into essential, particularly in areas like claims, the place development historically correlates with elevated headcount and complexity.
‘Automation helps to simplify issues’
“It isn’t acceptable that with increasingly parcels we are inclined to have increasingly techniques and workers coping with claims”, says Lauerer. “Automation helps to simplify issues. Colleagues on this space can use their time to deal with particular instances and examine anomalies.”
The consumer suggestions has been overwhelmingly constructive. By simplifying communication with carriers and decreasing reliance on spreadsheets or siloed techniques, declare.me has freed up the workforce to deal with strategic enchancment reasonably than operational overhead.
A mannequin for the way forward for retail logistics
The success of the answer at Thomann underscores a broader shift in retail logistics—from fragmented, handbook techniques to related, clever platforms that create worth past supply.
With plans to broaden the usage of declare.me to extra markets and carriers, Thomann is laying the groundwork for a future during which declare administration is not only about resolving points—it’s about studying from them. “We not solely wish to course of particular person claims effectively but in addition be taught extra from the info and repeatedly enhance”, says Lauerer.
It’s a mindset that aligns completely with declare.me’s imaginative and prescient: to simplify worldwide delivery by means of digital innovation and customer-centric service. In response to Thomann, higher claims administration is not only about logistics. It’s about delivering a greater buyer expertise, constructing operational resilience, and creating area for sustainable development.
