Ecommerce Fulfillment: Time to Meet the 1-2 Day Delivery Challenge!

All around us, the shift to digital commerce and distributed logistics is accelerating.

New paradigms, automation, operating methods, partnerships, tools and technologies are what will allow us all to connect, harness, control and then ultimately benefit from the speed of these changes.

The power of online sales and ecommerce fulfillment partnerships grows exponentially when the partners are fully aligned in both objectives and execution.

Over the last several years just such a partnership has formed and flourished between Max Warehouse and Etail Solutions for both sales growth and the support of profitable ecommerce fulfillment and digital commerce sales.

Best way to show the full extent of this partnership is by sharing the below graphic highlighting the Digital Ecosystem jointly created which includes key statistics and results:

All ecommerce sellers and supporting logistics operators and/or third party providers are now having to deal with the "logistics limbo" of shorter delivery lead times, resulting from Amazon continuously lowering the bar, with 1-2 day now becoming consumer's expected norm.

In addition to the improved customer experience benefits of 1-2 day delivery, all ecommerce merchants successfully executing a Distributed Logistics strategy to make this happen can also expect the below:

Enabling 1-2 Day delivery not only makes your online shoppers happier, it also increases top line revenue AND makes your business more profitable by reducing transport costs at the same time!

Based on the above, it's easy to understand why profitably enabling 1-2 day ecommerce fulfillment and delivery matters, but to get there requires logistics and ecommerce professionals to rethink current distribution models, and to then realign their supply chain network and tech stack for digital commerce fulfillment.

But getting there is not just a simple matter of opening more fulfillment centers, there are five key concepts which need to be understood, embraced and then enabled by technology in order to profitably operate 1-2 day ecommerce fulfillment.

These are Distributed Inventory Management (DIM), Dynamic Pricing, Dynamic Publishing, Distributed Order Management (DOM) and Distributed Inventory Forecasting (DIF), each of which will be explained in my upcoming article, Highlighting the Five Key Tools & Concepts Required for Distributed Logistics.

It's incredibly important for all leaders to understand that this is not just one more consultancy fad, or shiny new object to tinker with, successfully making this digital distributed logistics transition is indeed paramount, as you're actually fighting for the future relevancy of your business in the digital world.

Are you and your team up to meeting the challenge?

Jeff Ashcroft

If you would like some personal help in preparing to meet these ecommerce fulfillment challenges, feel free to just reach out via jeff@supplychainnetwork.com, @JeffAshcroft or 416.990.6433 Cheers!