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Introducing the WareIQ App Store: Streamline your eCommerce Fulfillment and Shipping Operations

Businesses have myriad needs which vary from one organisation to another, as well as evolve rapidly over time. To enable our esteemed customers to augment the WareIQ platform further, aligned with their logistics workflows, our team of experts has designed a suite of powerful applications. Based on your valuable suggestions, we realised that it may become cumbersome for you, at times, to hunt for the applications unless we organise them into a single point of access. Hence, we are delighted to launch the WareIQ App Store, making it extremely easy for you to discover the apps that you need at your fingertips at the right time. How does the WareIQ App Store Help You? When you visit the WareIQ App Store, you get the flavour of a superior design and ease of experience, with convenient navigational tools, fed with live data of your business performance. Let's dive deeper to understand the massive range of capabilities of the WareIQ App Store and what it means for your business. Provides you with more tools in your arsenal to boost your eCommerce operations amd make supply chain your competitive advantage.Acts as centralised portal, empowering you to manage all the stages of your eCommerce fulfillment and shipping operations from WareIQ platform directly.Shed down the inefficiency, inconvenience and complexity of working on multiple non-integrable apps. Our suite of powerful applications can easily integrate with your eCommerce workflows and systems, thereby opening new avenues to scale up your business.Leverage AI-ML powered analytics, fed with live data, for smart demand planning, smart inventory placement and network optimisation to enable same/next-day delivery for our customers.Helps you reach out to your customers on the right channel at the right touchpoint, and build trust with your customers through transparent communication and seamless engagement.Build customer loyalty by ensuring a delightful post-shipment experience for your customers. Top Apps to Check Out on the WareIQ App Store It may look confusing to you at the first glance, which app to use for which purpose. To make your task easy, here's a detailed analysis of each of the apps on the WareIQ App Store. Branded Tracking Delight your customers with a premium post-ship experience through a Branded Tracking page built with capabilities such as re-targeting and cross selling to increase your revenue. Turn your order tracking page into a profitable marketing channelImprove your products and shipping operationsIncrease customer engagementIncrease customer satisfactionCustomized branded pages Sample Branded Tracking Page There are several benefits of using the Branded Tracking application on the WareIQ App Store: COD and NDR Verification - You can easily verify Cash on Delivery collections by the delivery person and get Non Delivery Reports at your fingertips, so that you are always ahead of your competition on the vital performance metrics.Showcase Product Banners to your customers - Product Banners create a long-lasting impression of your products on your target customers' minds, enabling greater brand-recall and mindshare than your competitors. Gather feedback from your customers - Collecting feedback from customers just after the delivery helps you understand the pain-points of your customers, so that you can work on the weaknesses immediately.Create Brand Awareness - Creating brand awareness will increase customer loyalty, drive up-selling and cross-selling opportunities and boost word-of-mouth for your brand. Link-backs to your store - Store links that redirect the customer to your online store help to drive repeat sales and reinforces customers' confidence on your brand and products.Live Tracking and Updates - Provide full shipping journey and real-time order updates on the tracking page, so that you maintain the highest levels of transparency and trust with your customers, avoid unwarranted misunderstandings. It is very easy to create and customise your own Branded Tracking Page. Click here to learn how you can do it. Notifications It is well-established fact that customer loyalty can be effectively boosted through frequent and transparent communication with the customer through the product fulfilment process. It also helps to reduce the number of grievances and support tickets raised by customers from time to time. With Notifications application on the WareIQ App Store, you can significantly enhance customer engagement through effortless communications, and deliver an impeccable post-purchase experience to your customers through AI-ML powered Notifications and WhatsApp automation. This helps to: Increase customer satisfactionBuild customer trustTransparency in the shipping processIncreases the delivery success ratePre-empt EscalationsReduce unnecessary customer support calls There are several benefits of using the Notifications application: Send timely order updatesCommunicating cutomers about the delivery scheduleUpdating customers about their orders regularlyCreate brand awareness and drive cross-sell opportunitiesSend order updates to your customers on the particular events that you wishGet your business and operations related notifications Customer Feedback Customer Feedback App can get detailed reports on the WareIQ dashboard for brand performance based on the feedback collected from your customers, which will help you to: Increase customer retention and loyaltyImprove customer satisfactionAnalyze customer sentimentMeasure and improve the brand perceptionIdentify unhappy customers proactively You reap some major benefits by using the Customer Reviews app on WareIQ App Store: Gather customer feedbackAct on customer escalations in real timeCollect customer feedback on brand and shipping experience Weight Lock Predicting the final dimensions and weight of the ordered consignment is a tedious and almost impossible task. However, courier partners maintain stringent pricing policies across different weight and size ranges, making it difficult to handle such issues. With the Weight Lock application on WareIQ App Store, you can freeze the weights of your products to eliminate the hassle of weight discrepancies and ship products without worrying about the weight discrepancies. This will definitely help to: Avoid repeated follow-ups with the courier partners over the weight discrepanciesGet accurate shipping cost so that you can do the cost planning before handSave your time and effort on negotiations for weight discrepanciesBring uniformity to streamline your business operationsMake your operations more efficient with Weight Freeze However, there are some product-level pre-requisites for setting up the Weight Lock app:- Dimensions of the productWeight of the productProduct Images Click here to learn how you can easily add Master Products, upload their dimensions, weights and other details. Shipping Badges Shipping Badges appear on your product pages that helps customer check pin code serviceability and the expected delivery date for any product. Why Shipping Badges App? Check pin code serviceability and the expected delivery dateGet upto 30% increase customer conversionsIncrease the trust of your brand Benefits of Shipping Badges App: Drive sales for your productsShow estimated delivery timeReassure customers with prime-like badges on your website You can use this app to: Check real-time inventory availability of the productIdentify the nearest warehouseCheck for the fastest available shipping timeline across our logistics network IVR Calling New-age eCommerce customers prefer to remain connected to the sellers through time-saving modes of communication such as direct calling, but at the same time, they are concerned with their privacy. Similarly, eCommerce business and customer success managers are often exhausted with telephonic intrusions on their personal mobile numbers. To alleviate these worries, now you can leverage the IVR Calling feature on WareIQ App Store as a command centre to connect with your customers and provide lightning-fast reconciliation, without revealing your telephone number. The feature helps you to: Record conversations and track them on order basisEmpower customer teams to seamlessly address customer grievancesEnable a privacy-first approach by keeping your contact details and customer conversation details private RTO Shield RTO Shield gives the eCommerce/D2C businesses a complete checkout strategy to save on RTO losses and boost your revenue Why WareIQ’s RTO Shield? Claim refund for the shipping cost of any RTO order that was predicted safe by usTechnology based smart COD checkout option to detect risky users and save on shipping costsAutomatically disable COD for untrustworthy and blacklisted customersDuplicate orders identification and eliminationShipping Address Verification and smart shipping decisions based on the completeness of the address Benefits of RTO Shield: Improve conversion rates and reduce cart abandonmentFastest checkout experience, checkout under 10 secondsIntelligently identify high RTO risk customers from data sets comprising of telecom, banks, hyperlocal, and OTTIdentify abusers with the help of historical behaviour data on past buying behaviour and win over fraudsters How does it work? Integrate the application with WareIQ3 months historical data would be needed to train the model & generate accurate predictions.Go live in 3-5 days WareIQ RUSH Online businesses can offer Same Day Delivery to their customers and accelerate their online sales with WareIQ Rush. WareIQ RUSH allows eCommerce & D2C businesses to reach a larger audience in a shorter period of time (within one day) by empowering them with a strong nationwide network of fulfillment centers and micro-fulfillment centers near their customers. Why do you need WareIQ RUSH? Capture impulse buying behaviour of your customers by giving them shorter delivery timelinesReduce cart abandonment rate by giving express delivery to your customersAvoid cancellations due to delayed delivery and deliver the orders within hoursDeliver the COD orders quickly to get the remittance earlyGive a delightful and hassle-free experience to your customers that they can remember Benefits of WareIQ RUSH: Reducing delivery times - Ensuring your fulfilment centres are well-stocked so that you can reach a larger audience in a shorter period of time & offer same day delivery serviceReducing costs - Save resources spent on establishing infrastructure and store your inventory in fulfilment centres as per your business needsImproved customer satisfaction - With WareIQ’s prompt response times, you can ensure timely deliveries and greater brand reliability translating to satisfied customers Conclusion WareIQ offers a full-stack fulfillment platform for eCommerce companies to offer same day and next day delivery to customers – an Amazon Prime-like experience but accessible to everyone. With a strong nationwide network of fulfilment centres & urban dark stores near to end-customers and access to all major national & hyperlocal last mile couriers at discounted rates, WareIQ has established itself as a reliable partner for many reputed eCommerce players across the country. The easily integrable centralised tech platform has been extremely helpful for our customers. With the arsenal of business tailored apps on the WareIQ App Store, you can now choose which app to use to supercharge your supply chain operations. The 1-CLICK App-Integration experience is opening new avenues to scale up business over an inefficient & complex ecosystem of integrating multiple standalone business applications.While you can choose & drop apps as per your business usage in a completely hassle-free experience, you can get working previews of the apps through free trials, and subscribe as per your usage. These smarter apps powering same/next-day delivery help leverage AI/ML intelligence for areas, such as on-demand planning, smart inventory placement and network optimisation. Sign Up Now with WareIQ to avail our superior fulfilment tech platform & enhance your online business growth.

March 25, 2022

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Same Day Delivery Service: Key to Accelerate Online Sales in 2024

Did you know that same day delivery service can help brands achieve 30% jump in revenueHigher repeat purchasesNear zero returns % As more & more brands start selling online to persist in the market, due to the burgeoning preference of online shopping among consumers, easy & improved accessibility to smartphones & faster internet services, one of the service offerings that has turned out to be the key enabler to online business growth is faster delivery service. Gone are the days when same day delivery service used to be just another factor for maximum customer delight. Same day courier delivery service is the new normal for online brands now. With the growing presence of online brands & geographically dispersed demand from customers across the country, eCommerce brands can differentiate themselves from other online players with same day courier delivery service even to the customers in the nook & corner of the country. Read along to understand how same day delivery services can be a game-changer for eCommerce & D2C business & how WareIQ RUSH can be your best fulfillment partner to accelerate your online sales. What is Same Day Delivery for eCommerce? Same Day Delivery for eCommerce brands is fast evolving as one of the most preferred services. Leading marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart have made deep pockets in the eCommerce space with Same Day fast Delivery service. As the concept is fairly new, there is a lack of awareness among eCommerce brands regarding the myriad advantages of same day/ 24 hour delivery. It means delivery of purchased products to the customer in less than 24 hours, ideally within the same day as the order is placed on the eCommerce platform. A recent survey showed: 60% of online shoppers said that delivery speed was an influential factor in their purchase decisions80% of shoppers shift to a different ecommerce brand if delivery speeds are too long. Thus, speed is a very important factor for any eCommerce business as success depends not only on the product quality but also on the time taken by it to reach the customer. More specifically, about 49% of customers consider Same Day or Next Day Delivery as a value addition to their purchase experience on any eCommerce platform, according to a recent study. [contactus_uth] Why is Same Day Delivery Service Necessary for Online Brands? The e-commerce industry is getting very competitive day by day. With the entry of multiple billion-dollar companies, the segment is getting crowded as never before. With a lot of money in hand, they are able to provide multiple services such as same day /next day delivery service to the end customer which the small or medium-sized entrepreneurs are unable to provide. Moreover, the success of an e-commerce business not only depends on the product quality but also on the entire customer experience which depends heavily on the delivery timelines. For offline businesses who are planning to start online businesses & hence be a multi-channel retailer, same day courier delivery provides an opportunity to participate in the e-commerce boom and stay relevant in the market by providing more convenience to their customers at the same time with a hassle-free same day delivery experience. Do customers really want it? According to a recent survey by PWC, more than 60% of shoppers say delivery speeds influence their purchasing decisions and more than 80% of online shoppers search elsewhere when delivery speeds are too long, this clearly shows how much speed matters. As per Conveyco, “Nearly half of consumers said they were willing to wait within two days for delivery in 2021 as opposed to a quarter of consumers who said they would wait within 3-4 days. This 20% drop off illustrates the importance and expectation that most consumers have when it comes to standard two-day shipping.” Source: Mckinsey Report Now the expectations have started shifting towards same day courier delivery. If the online businesses don't find out solutions to meet the rising customer expectations of hassle-free same day delivery experience, either they are going to be surpassed by their competitors or completely run out of business altogether in the coming future which won't be too far. How is Same Day Delivery Service a Key Enabler for Revenue Growth for eCommerce Brands? High conversion rates - Ecommerce brands offering this fast delivery service have higher customer conversion to capture impulse buying behaviourLow cart abandonment rates - customers tend to abandon the cart if the delivery time is long (5 - 10 days)Delightful customer experience - give a delightful and hassle-free experience to your customers that they can rememberLow order cancellation rates - reach your customers in 24 hours, so that they won't cancel the order due to a delay in delivery.Short cashflow cycles - to get the cash from the COD orders early, you will have to deliver the orders early What are the Top Challenges Faced by eCommerce while Providing Same Day Delivery Services? With geographically dispersed demand & rising customer expectations of same day delivery service of the products purchased online, even in the remotest parts of the country, e-commerce brands are now under pressure to provide such service to stay relevant in the market. However, 24 hour delivery can be challenging for e-commerce brands to offer because of the inaccessibility of prime-like fulfilment infrastructure to online brands selling outside of Amazon due to the following 3 factors: High fixed investments (significant contract size)Rigid contractsTech complexity The fact that eCommerce brands typically don't have physical stores limit their ability to offer same day or 24 hour delivery service. This also makes it difficult to personalize deliveries and create a seamless customer experience. If e-commerce and D2C brands are handling their own delivery operations, they face a lot of challenges: Missing the 24 hours delivery timeline of orders due to improper planning & coordination of fulfillment process leading to minor delays in O2S (Order to Ship), S2D (Ship to Deliver) timelines that leads to delay in expected O2D (Order to Deliver) timeline of 24 hoursInadequate size of fleets & understaffed warehouses to handle the increased volume associated with same day delivery (in case of sudden spike)Improper packaging, & mishandling of items that lead to product damage during transitImproper labeling that leads to wrong product reaching a wrong destination Do it yourself (in-house) or find the right partner to do it for you (outsource)? There are 2 ways in which online brands can provide same day delivery services to their customers: In-house fulfilment: This provides more control and transparency on the processes, but it is hard to oversee and manage as it requires a lot of capital and manpowerOutsourced fulfilment: This helps to serve the ecommerce businesses in a cost-effective manner but comes with its own set of challenges Apart from the differences, the operations involved in both the methods are similar, which includes Receiving and storing stock. Tracking and analyzing inventory.Picking and packing orders. Shipping deliveries with a shipping partner. The major challenge with both the solutions while offering same day delivery service to the customer is the cost of delivery. If you add the shipping cost to the product, then definitely the customer will abandon the cart. You also can't bear the cost of shipping because it will wipe off all the margin you had selling the product. Here is a short comparison between the 2 methods: How WareIQ RUSH Helps eCommerce & D2C Brands Accelerate Online Sales with Same Day Delivery Services? 5 ways in which WareIQ RUSH helps you accelerate your online sales with same day delivery services: Faster Order to Delivery WareIQ RUSH allows ecommerce & D2C businesses to reach a larger audience in a shorter period of time (within one day) by empowering you with a strong nationwide network of fulfilment centres near their customers. Our smart inventory placement ensures that your fulfilment centres are well-stocked and enables efficient & prompt delivery. As per reports, more than 60% of consumers, currently receiving deliveries in 5-15 days, are willing to pay more for a 1-day shipping speed and about 40% of customers prefer to shop from stores that offer 2-day shipping. Improved CPS (Cost per Shipment) WareIQ RUSH’s customers save resources spent on establishing infrastructure(i.e. Warehouses and fulfilment centres). We help you store your inventory in fulfilment centres as per your business needs. Our team’s expertise in logistics and our extensive warehousing network across India enables greater influence during negotiations(with warehouse owners and delivery partners), resulting in volume discounts for our clients Planning ahead in time WareIQ’s tech platform uses real-time data to enable your organisation to predict demand. With this data, you can make wise data-driven decisions ahead of time, thereby reducing costly delays and enabling supply chain efficiencies frequently Onground expert support Given the vastness of the logistics involved, WareIQ RUSH provides the expertise needed to improve and advance your supply chain for India’s ever-changing e-commerce environment. Our customer success teams support your day-to-day on-ground operations along with other requirements such as transport documentation, import and export licenses, compliances and economic regulations Improved customer satisfaction With WareIQ’s real-time data and prompt response times, you can ensure timely deliveries and greater brand reliability. This translates to satisfied customers — the most crucial success metric for direct to customer brands in a competitive space like India Customer Testimonial on Twitter Conclusion The online shopping experience of customers reaches an altogether different level with same day delivery experience. With minimum differentiation in product quality & features in similar categories & price range, same day delivery service can be an outstanding value proposition to your customers. In order to stay competitive in the market, same day courier delivery is probably the only way forward for eCommerce & D2C brands. While same-day delivery is an immense opportunity, it can be an operational challenge for founders/business owners alike. This is where WareIQ comes into the picture to help businesses accelerate their online sales. WareIQ is a category defining, best- in class full-stack eCommerce fulfillment tech platform (with inbuilt inventory planning, order management & shipping system) for modern brands to accelerate online sales/ expedite revenue growth & profits with same/next day delivery. We not only help you reduce your logistic costs but also your delivery timelines – this could be the game-changer your business needs! WareIQ offers centralised tech platform for your entire eCommerce operations ML-based prediction engine for efficient warehouse network design & smart inventory placementCentralised platform for core fulfilment & shipping operationsPost-shipping apps for delightful experience & zero to minimum supply chain leakages [signup] Same Day Delivery FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) What services should the fastest couriers provide apart from same day delivery?Pickup, delivery, returns management, COD and prepaid payment are common services provided by India's quickest courier services. What makes WareIQ different from the other couriers?WareIQ is an ecommerce fulfillment company that acts like a shipping aggregator with shipping Partnership across all prominent National & Regional Couriers, along with integrations with same day delivery partners in metros. Are first-mile and last-mile shipment included in these quickest courier partners?Yes. All of these courier services provide first-mile and last-mile same day/ next day delivery. Does WareIQ offer same-day delivery service?Yes, WareIQ offers same-day delivery in all 7 major metros. How does WareIQ ensure same day delivery services for all its eCommerce clients?WareIQ ensures fulfillment centres near your customer are well-stocked, leading to same-day delivery.The 3 reasons mentioned below ensures same day delivery for WareIQ’s ecommerce partners:1. Strong nationwide network of fulfilment centers, dark stores & hyperlocal services 2. Accurate advanced demand forecasting models3. Smart inventory placement system

March 03, 2022

Why e-commerce and D2C businesses choose 3PL for their fulfilment needs

Indian e-commerce has grown and evolved significantly over the last few years. Brands are increasingly turning towards alternative online selling channels beyond ecommerce marketplaces (like D2C and social commerce), to reach consumers. Thereby, requiring fulfilment services beyond the captive logistics of the ecommerce marketplaces like Amazon FBA. Enter Third Party Logistics service providers (3PL). 3PLs allows e-commerce and D2C companies to save time and effort spent on organising and managing a supply chain by insourcing their logistics processes end-to-end, including picking orders from the manufacturing unit, warehousing, packaging, shipping, etc. A market study conducted by Mordor intelligence showed that the Indian 3PL market is expected to register a growth rate of over 11.5% during the period of 2020 to 2025, with D2C and e-commerce entrepreneurs demanding new logistics capabilities and complex solutions from the 3PL service providers to help them in the successful management of supply chain processes, bring down conventional logistics costs and handle more complicated tasks as they scale. In this article, we explore why e-commerce companies are choosing 3PL providers for their fulfilment needs. Rise of e-commerce in India A report by IBEF (India Brand Equity Fund) suggested that the Indian e-commerce market will reach US$ 99 billion by 2024, growing at a 27% CAGR over 2019-24. Source: IBEF (India Brand Equity Fund) Among other things, this growth will be fuelled by the following factors: Increasing internet user-base and smartphone penetration: India has the second-highest active internet user-base globally and is also one of the largest data consumers. As per IBEF report, this number has grown by a significant proportion in 2020 and is forecasted to grow by approximately 60% by 2022. Graph by IBEF on Smartphone user base in India Covid-19 PandemicThe Covid-19 pandemic has also undeniably contributed to the increase in ecommerce sales as citizens were forced to stay indoors.With more and more people staying indoors and on their screens, there has been a fresh influx of first-time online shoppers as well as an increase in online shopping in general in the absence of an offline avenue. The 2021 Global Payments report by Worldpay FIS confirmed this by tracking trends across 41 countries and concluded that digital commerce had accelerated during the pandemic. The report projected the Indian e-commerce market, driven by shopping on mobile, to grow 21% annually over the next four years. There is a good chance many of the first-time online shoppers will permanently shift a part of their shopping online, given that online shopping appeals to the time and comfort conscious consumers leading busy lives. Logistics providers that are driving the Indian ecommerce industry There are primarily three types of logistics service providers (LSPs) that are driving ecommerce fulfilment in India. Traditional LSPs, Captive LSPs and e-commerce retail-focused LSPs. In 2018, an in-depth analysis by KPMG showed that e-commerce retail-focused LSP’s (logistics service providers) occupied 28% of the e-commerce retail logistics sector, and this number has been increasing. E-commerce retail-focused 3PLs E-commerce retail-focused 3PLs are designed specifically to handle the demands of e-commerce fulfillment, a lot more intensive operation than offline distribution and fulfillment. Some 3PLs are equipped to work best with startups and SMEs and provide plug-n-play substitute to building infrastructure, while still giving access to demand analytics, fulfillment infrastructure and advanced WMS technologies. Many SME’s and startups are choosing to take advantage of this. And some of the benefits include: Decentralising inventory for one or two-day delivery without investing time and resources on building infrastructure. (e.g., warehouses, forklifts, labor, etc) Alternative to hassles of fulfill orders in-house or via other captive marketplace logistics Saving several hours a week packing boxes and shipping orders. More time for strategic projects like marketing and product development. Lower minimum order requirement __________________________________________________________________________ Looking for a fulfillment service provider for your e-commerce or D2C business? WareIQ is a 3PL offering end-to-end fulfillment services that include smart inventory management, strategic and customised warehousing solutions and tech-focused optimisation of your supply chain to meet fast shipping timelines and boost sales. Get in touch to know more.

May 13, 2021

3 things to know about WareIQ’s Next-Day Delivery

The ubiquity of internet access has levelled the retail playing field, making it easy for individuals and businesses to sell products without geographic limitation. eCommerce shopping is growing rapidly in India. The backbone of any successful eCommerce retailer is its logistics strategy and how quickly and efficiently it can fulfill orders to customers. Why is logistics so crucial? As more transactions move towards online, customers want what they order almost as instantly as they would get it if they were in a physical store. This expectation is largely attributable to one company: Amazon. It was only a few years ago that acceptable delivery timeframes were 5-7 business days. But definitely no today! Amazon has transformed the market in such a way that free, two-day shipping is now the accepted norm and that’s quickly evolving into a one-day expectation. One of the biggest challenges for eCommerce retailers is shopping cart abandonment. Sixty-nine per cent of all online shopping carts are abandoned. Multiple sources of industry research confirm that the number one reason is due to high shipping costs. So, one antidote to shopping cart abandonment is faster, more affordable shipping. And one antidote to Amazon is being able to deliver at a comparable cost and speed. The answer? Next-day delivery. Reaching your end-user within a next-day delivery is made possible with a larger, dynamic fulfillment network. But it doesn’t come without its challenges. As more and more retailers seek to compete with Amazon and offer fast, low-cost delivery to customers, here are the top 3 things to know about a next-day delivery fulfillment network like WareIQ: Identifying the Right Fulfillment Locations Allocating and Managing Inventory Evolving Customer Delivery Promises 1. Identifying the right fulfillment locations The crux of offering next-day delivery to your customers is adding more fulfillment centers to your distribution network. Traditional means of doing that have either meant you buy and operate your own facilities and resources, you outsource to a 3PL, or you go through Amazon’s fulfillment services. Next-day delivery from WareIQ is different. Instead of investing in fixed assets, long-term lease commitments, or Amazon’s services, you can leverage our marketplace of already-operating facilities that have excess space and resources for warehousing and fulfillment services. But, if you want to reach 95% of your customers with next-day delivery, how do you know how many fulfillment centers to add and where to add them? At WareIQ, we’ll start by running a full network analysis that models various fulfillment scenarios using your actual backend data. Based on your fulfillment goals for time and cost, we’ll work with you to find the most cost-effective network scenario to achieve these goals. 2. Allocating and managing inventory Having more locations in your network does complicate how you manage and allocate your inventory. However, there are several ways to work through this along with WareIQ. As you move into more WareIQ locations, what should you consider when planning for inventory? Decentralized demand increases uncertainty and variability and makes forecasts harder to pin down. Regional and local preferences may create a different mix of inventory at each location Rebalancing inventory between locations may be required Here are three ways to keep your inventory in check as you grow your network: Understand the needs of your customers: We can help you move to next-day fulfillment to all of your customers, but is next-day shipping their expectation for all of your products? Analyzing historic inventory backorders can provide a rough understanding of what you’ll need at each location, and performing A/B testing can help quantify the improvements to conversion that’s associated with shorter ship times. Start with your top-performing SKUs: Inventory allocation becomes exponentially more complicated when you combine your high- and low-performing SKUs at the regional and local level. As you begin to offer faster ship times, start with your top performers and allocate those by region. Keep it simple. Proactively manage your projects and relative inventory: In the early stages, you may need to spend more time managing inventory. Take it slowly and measure every move until you can better predict and proactively manage inventory and its allocation. We’re also here to help you make the most of your network. We can partner with you to help you analyze and forecast demand, establish the right mix of A, B, and C SKUs. 3. Evolving customer delivery promises WareIQ’s Next-Day Delivery is designed to help you improve your fulfillment strategy with a solution that makes sense for your business. This can be done in three ways: Drive growth: You can reach more of your customers faster through a network that offers the flexibility and scalability traditional 3PLs and warehousing solutions can’t Cut costs: Eliminate traditional warehousing expenses and get the right inventory to the right location at the right time for the right cost Reduce risk: Control your own brand experience by delivering to your customers in your own brand collaterals and packaging As you refine your fulfillment strategy, you can begin to evolve your customer delivery promise and differentiate yourself from your competitors. For high-growth eCommerce retailers, your logistics strategy is the backbone of your business. To Know about WareIQ Next-Day Delivery - www.wareIQ.com

March 04, 2021

The benefits of selling D2C

Obviously cutting the middleman out of the equation provides the potential for brands to earn a higher margin and have direct access to their consumers and their data. But there are other notable benefits of selling D2C, which we explain below: Benefit #1 To gain a better understanding of the customer Before the intervention of D2C, manufacturers rarely interacted with the people who purchased their product. Sure, brands may try to get a good understanding of their target market by doing research and conducting surveys. But trying to understand your customers through these methods isn’t necessarily the best way to get to know them. Ideally, you need to have direct contact with your customer through every stage of the sale process, this also includes the communication that you have with the customer after you sold the product. These types of interactions are very hard to replicate in a focus group. To give you an example, it is widely known that consumers in the US want to eat healthily. GlobalData reports that 87 per cent of consumers in the US check the ingredients before they purchase a food product, and 75 per cent are concerned about consuming too much processed and unhealthy foods. But on the contrary, those same customers, who have said they want to eat healthily, also want to indulge in a gourmet burger served with fries. D2C enables brands to gain direct insights into their consumers and gather data that accurately reflect their behaviour. Benefit #2 Faster GTM (go to market) Besides being stuck in their ways, another reason why most legacy brands tend to shy away from innovation is that of the extreme risks involved. On average, a new product launch takes between 18 to 36 months - too slow, right? That’s exactly what customers feel. In D2C, manufacturers can take quick decisions allowing them to launch a new innovative product on a smaller scale but faster. Manufacturers can develop a specific product, test it within a very tight demographic, and then get their feedback. This enables large manufacturing firms to understand what their customers love and hate about the product so they can make the required adjustments where appropriate. Benefit #3 Increased control over brand, product, and reputation In a traditional manufacturing-retailer relationship, manufacturers could only have full control over their packaging and their outbound marketing activities like TV commercials and billboards. Once the product hits the shelves, larger brands no longer have control in trying to influence the sale. Even though these large brands try to influence as much as they can through commercial advertisements, if retailers struggle to sell their product, then they’re at risk of incurring a loss. With D2C, firms maintain complete control over their brand from the moment a customer makes their initial engagement right up until the product has been purchased.

February 24, 2021

Building a Next-day shipping engine for your business

As increasing consumer demand accelerates e-commerce growth, the logistics of getting orders to customers becomes more complicated - especially with the novel coronavirus impacting entire supply chains. Despite the uncertain times (or more so during this time), one thing remains unchanged; the customer's need for fast delivery. Popularized by Amazon, same-day and next-day delivery has become the default expectation today. In fact, studies by PwC & Accenture reveal that: 61% of consumers are willing to pay more for 1-day shipping speed and 40% of customers prefer to shop from stores that offer 2-day shipping. More than (51%) half of retailers offer same-day delivery and 65% plan to offer it within two years. Fast shipping is no longer a good-to-have but rather a necessity for e-commerce businesses to survive. Amazon has built a supply chain that can deliver most products within 2-day (and high moving goods the same day). They optimize every part of the fulfilment value chain to achieve these timelines. But can other e-commerce sellers provide the same experience without Amazon-level resources? Yes, they can. How? To optimize the fulfilment cycle, we must first understand the ‘Click to Door’ journey - all the different stages and destinations an order goes through before it reaches your customer. Click to Door journey What does it take for an order to reach your customer? Let’s take a look. Pack & Ship: The journey starts with your warehouse, where the order has to be packed and labeled. This could typically take 1-2 days depending on order volume and your warehouse's manpower productivity.First Mile Delivery: The order is collected from your warehouse by a courier partner and shipped to the distribution center. Typically, the pick-up schedule is once a day if the warehouse is located in the metros. In case of larger order volumes, courier partners can also schedule multiple pick-ups every day.Mid Mile Delivery: This stage involves the transfer from one hub to another. All collected parcels are aggregated based on to and fro zones and moved together. The mid mile process, typically, takes one day. Local Sorting Center: Once the order reaches the delivery target zone hub, it is passed to the local sorting center based on the area of delivery. This typically takes anywhere from half a day to two days. Last Mile Delivery: Finally, the order is picked up from the sorting center and aggregated with multiple orders going to the same pin code and assigned to a delivery boy. The entire process is inherently long and relies on the productivity of your distribution partners and the partnership that you have with them. Inefficiencies in either of these stages can lead to significant delays and unhappy customers, i.e. lost revenue for your business. How can you optimize the process? To build an efficient shipping engine, your logistics network must be efficient. This incorporates a mix of partners, resources, and best practices designed to help you optimise. Schedule multiple pickups in a dayStore goods in distributed warehouses close to your demandPartner with same-day delivery partners While you can implement the above processes yourself, it may require a lot of initial investment and stretch your capacities. A good alternative would be to partner with companies that offer logistics support. This is where we come in. Modern logistics partners such as WareIQ unifies network, technology, and expertise to offer end-to-end fulfilment services allowing you to focus on your core business and not worry about logistics. With WareIQ you get: The ability to store inventory in several of the fulfilment centers so you don’t have to manage your own warehouse(s)Robust technology that tracks your inventory and orders and offers advanced analyticsThe e-commerce logistics expertise needed to improve your supply chainBulk discounts and ability to reduce your delivery times and shipping costs [contactus] Many growing e-commerce businesses like Kama Ayurveda, Wingreens Farms, Sangeetha Mobiles, and Organic Riot partner with WareIQ to offer next-day shipping. WareIQ helps you shorten your orders’ click to door journey and make the entire process more efficient [signup] With WareIQ's infrastructure and technology, you can ship 90% of orders across India in 1 day. Such delivery timelines translate to not only cheaper logistics costs but an elevated customer experience, resulting in higher conversions and lower cart abandonment.

November 11, 2020

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