BMV is evolving its logistics offerings to better meet the needs of online retailers. By partnering with Shippingbo, the group is adding an e-commerce orchestration layer to its existing infrastructure to enhance connectivity, transparency, and flexibility, both in France and across Europe.
Shippingbo announces its partnership with BMV, a leading French transportation and logistics provider, as part of the expansion of its e-commerce offerings. Already equipped with Hardis WMS, BMV is relying on Shippingbo to better connect the sales channels and logistics flows of its merchant clients (marketplaces, manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, etc.), while maintaining control over its IT environment.
- Logistics providers need to integrate their services without starting from scratch
- A more agile platform for French, European, and hybrid workflows
- A collaboration that illustrates how the market has evolved
With about 15 warehouses in France and European distribution hubs in Germany through Barth Logistik and in the Netherlands through CTS Group, BMV has a network that meets growing market demand: supporting brands, retailers, and e-commerce businesses whose supply chains are becoming more hybrid, more omnichannel, and sometimes cross-border.
Logistics providers need to integrate their services without starting from scratch
The lines between transportation, logistics, B2B, B2C, and omnichannel are less distinct than they used to be. Retailers no longer expect just a service provider capable of storing, picking, and shipping. They also want reliable inventory, visible orders, traceable shipments, and systems capable of integrating with their own tools: CMS, marketplaces, ERP, carriers, or in-house solutions.
A Challenge of Supply and Integration
For logistics providers, the challenge is twofold. They must enhance their offerings to meet these expectations, while avoiding turning every new customer or every new channel into a cumbersome IT project. This is precisely Shippingbo’s role in this system: to provide an e-commerce orchestration component capable of linking sales channels, merchant tools, carriers (freight and courier services), and the logistics operations already in place at BMV.
Modernize without disrupting what already exists
BMV is therefore retaining its Hardis WMS foundation and its operational investments, while adding a layer of connectivity and orchestration tailored to the needs of e-commerce customers.
“Many carriers that have transitioned into logistics providers already have strong operational expertise, particularly in B2B flows. Their challenge today is to align this expertise with the demands of e-commerce: greater visibility, greater connectivity, and greater agility. “With BMV, we’re demonstrating that it’s possible to modernize a logistics offering without discarding what already exists or unnecessarily complicating IT projects,” says Romain Parent, General Manager & CSO of Shippingbo.
A more agile platform for French, European, and hybrid workflows
With Shippingbo, BMV can offer a more flexible solution to merchants looking to outsource all or part of their logistics. The platform facilitates hybrid business models: a merchant can keep some operations in-house, outsource certain workflows, work with multiple warehouses, or adapt its operations as it grows.
An organization tailored to hybrid and European workflows
This approach is part of BMV’s broader service offering, built around a multimodal and customized approach. The group combines land, air, and sea transportation, freight forwarding, courier services, shuttle services, B2B and B2C logistics, as well as partner networks. This 4PL capability enables it to offer merchants solutions tailored to their specific logistics needs, drawing on both its own resources and a network of specialized carriers, particularly for parcel shipments in France and Germany.
This approach also makes sense on a European scale. With Barth Logistik in Germany and CTS Group in the Netherlands, BMV has partners to support customers whose operations extend beyond the French market alone. The challenge is to offer a more unified e-commerce infrastructure capable of connecting sales channels, inventory, and shipping across multiple regions without complicating the existing architecture.
“Our goal is to develop an e-commerce offering capable of supporting our customers in their French, European, and hybrid operations. With Shippingbo, we can strengthen this strategy while maintaining our operational foundation and our ability to offer customized services,” said Frédéric Ahr, Group Logistics Director at BMV.
For BMV, there is also a business imperative: to strengthen its e-commerce offering, better meet the requirements of online merchants, and increase its visibility within the Shippingbo ecosystem. By becoming compatible with the platform, BMV makes itself more easily recognizable to Shippingbo’s more than 15,000 active users and can more easily integrate these merchants into its operations.
“This collaboration allows us to make our offering more transparent to merchants who are already using Shippingbo. For BMV, this is a concrete business opportunity: we can more easily integrate these customers into our operations and offer them logistics solutions tailored to their e-commerce workflows,” says Xavier De Conigliano, Group Sales Director at BMV.
A technical solution designed for CIOs in the logistics industry
The partnership also highlights a key point for logistics companies’ IT departments: technical openness. Shippingbo allows for integration via modern, well-documented APIs that are tailored to existing IT environments. WMS vendors can establish standard connections to Shippingbo, but CIOs at logistics companies and carriers who wish to do so can set up a custom connection.
This approach allows IT teams to retain control over their architecture, integration choices, and evolution path. It addresses a real-world reality: not all logistics providers want to delegate all of their connectivity. Some prefer to rely on a specialized solution while retaining autonomy over data exchanges, workflows, and integration priorities.
In addition to the technical documentation provided, Shippingbo supports BMV teams throughout the integration process: understanding the platform’s specific logic, defining data flows, selecting data exchange methods, development, acceptance testing, and going live with the relevant clients. This support is part of a partnership-based approach led by the Shippingbo teams, from defining requirements to ensuring the success of the first client deployments.
“We wanted to preserve our core technical model while streamlining the integration of e-commerce orders. The WMS Bridge implemented with Shippingbo allows us to move in that direction. The technical documentation and operational support—from setting up workflows to testing and going live—enabled us to roll it out in just a few weeks. This is important for our teams: we’re gaining connectivity without losing control of our environment,” says Mickaël Vendramini, Head of Logistics Projects and Studies at BMV.
A collaboration that illustrates how the market has evolved
Beyond the BMV case, this collaboration illustrates a market trend: carriers and logistics providers looking to develop or structure an e-commerce offering do not necessarily need to rebuild their entire information system. They can rely on specialized, open, and compatible building blocks that integrate with their existing systems to gain speed, transparency, and commercial capacity. If they have in-house IT teams and/or an integrator, they can integrate Shippingbo with them—of course, with as much support as needed, but with a high degree of autonomy.
