Young Turks: Logistics market expected to quadruple by 2027 in India; experts discuss COVID challenges and road ahead

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The Rise of Micro Fulfilment Centres: Smaller spaces leading to bigger wins

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

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.