Synergy Logistics is UK-based global success story in the highly competitive world of Warehouse Management Systems. Paul Hamblin catches up with Chris White, the company’s recently appointed Chief Revenue Officer EMEA.
The great glory of the logistics industry is the variety of people talent it attracts. Maybe it’s something to do with grit, facing a tough challenge and taking satisfaction from a job well done, despite the glitches.
Chris White (pictured, below) is familiar with those qualities. His story is entertaining – a former professional footballer, he was a solid right-back in the English leagues with spells at Portsmouth, Peterborough United, Exeter City and various semi-pro teams before a contact via one of the club sponsors at Exeter led him to his first role in logistics. A quarter of a century later, after a successful IT/software sales and account management career with Hewlett-Packard, Pitney Bowes, DHL and comparison website Parcel2Go.com, Chris is now Chief Revenue Officer EMEA at Synergy Logistics, the UK-founded Warehouse Management System provider that is making waves globally. His role? “Anything to do with the customer, that’s me,” he sums up.
The Rules Engine Difference
The SnapFulfil WMS is itself another great story. Parent company Synergy Logistics demonstrates a history of innovative concepts going back to the 1970s and the early days of route scheduling and customs & excise solutions. By the 1980s, Synergy began to develop and market early WMS products. In 2007, SnapFulfil was officially launched. Utilising Adobe Flex and Microsoft.NET-based C# programming, it was one of the first cloud-based systems to offer real time information to optimise warehouse management without sacrificing any functionality.
Almost 20 years later, with laser focus still on its core WMS capability, Synergy continues to innovate and to compete with the ‘big beasts’ of the WMS sector. As of 2025, it has racked up 13 years of formal recognition in the much-coveted Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for WMS.
What’s the secret?
“At the top level, we class ourselves as a Tier One WMS, but at a fraction of the price of the big players,” Chris White explains. “We sell on our flexibility. Our core selling point is our rules engine, which is second to none. It’s simple, it’s very adaptable, and customers love it.”
The benefit of the rules engine is the control it offers to customers when warehouse circumstances and configuration demand modification to the WMS – changed putaway rules might be a fair example.
“For instance, our larger competitors are likely to charge high sums for changes,” explains Chris. “Our customers can speak directly to a human being at our call centre and make the change there and then, or they can go into our rules engine and make the alteration themselves.”
Effective recognition of evolving customer preferences is part of the software’s DNA. “We are now over 50 years old as a software provider, we are always listening to and acting upon changing demands and preferences for existing customers. These ideas then automatically go into new releases for the benefit of new customers.”
It’s also a neat way for SnapFulfil to remain ahead of the curve in terms of responding to customer needs and aspirations. The modus operandi has made customers very loyal.
“Our churn in the UK has always been and remains extremely low,” Chris White confirms. “We have a very low turnover of customers in that context. The accounts management team stays very close to them and is always aware of anything that can make a difference.”
First-rate customer service in the planning, implementation and servicing of projects is another key differential claimed by Synergy Logistics.
“Our highly skilled, very knowledgeable implementation team will work with clients for as long as they wish to implement SnapFulfil,” states Chris. “We have a 24/7 manned customer service centre in Castle Donington in the UK Midlands, the vast majority from a warehousing background, and we also have a customer success team for clients wanting to do smaller projects and development. It’s about staying close to our customers, maintaining that customer base.”
WMS requirements come in many sizes and shapes, so it’s vital to meet needs and aspirations across the scale spectrum.
“Let me give you an example about going from one scale to another: we had a global 3PL client come to us in November last year, who wanted to implement a single UK site, but they wanted the project completed within just one month. That is a tight timescale, to say the least. So we had the discussions at the back end of November and all of December, we started implementation in January and it took us just six weeks to complete because our product can be deployed straight out of the box. They already had a rival WMS, it was failing drastically, and our out-of-the-box solution did the trick for them. Now that client is speaking to us about global representation both for themselves and their subsidiaries.
“So that’s one example. With another, we might work with a client for two years to implement SnapFulfil in a certain part of their business if the project is complex. Our highly-skilled and knowledgeable team can boast decades of experience and they know how best to proceed. SnapFulfil is very easy to implement out of the box, but very flexible if you need it to be more complex to suit your business – and that depends on what level of ROI you are seeking.”
Can he offer figures for likely ROI?
“What matters is giving customers what they need, which are efficiencies within their business. And with those efficiencies comes your ROI. Typically, ROI is within 18-24 months with SnapFulfil, but it can be longer, depending on how we implement that business with them – is it multi-sites or single-site, for instance?”
The Here and Now
White paints a compelling picture of SnapFulfil capability and delivery, but he confirms that the current unstable international trading and political environment is not the most appropriate for an ambitious, flourishing business.
He believes that those companies who want to take a calculated risk of investment in the here and now will see the upsides. “Because our time to implementation is very short, the benefits are available to exploit more quickly. Post implementation, many of our competitors charge for changes and modifications whereas we generally don’t, we work alongside the customer as part of the project. With our rules engine, customers can make configurations themselves, if they so choose. Yes, WMS requires investment, but it’s about walking the customer through the benefits.”
