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
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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
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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.
