Member Article

Welcome to the age of immediate commerce

With click-to-door delivery in just hours now a reality for more buyers every day, same day delivery has rocketed beyond just a preferred choice – in 2020 it is fast becoming an expected standard. Evidence of this can be seen with a poll conducted by Business Insider Intelligence discovering that 96% of consumers equate fast delivery with same day delivery, whilst 36% of people abandon shopping carts at checkout if shipping time is too long. Whether a business is replenishing retail inventory, or a consumer wants doorstep delivery, they are hooked on the new immediacy. For business, it means unprecedented opportunity, so long as your fulfilment operation is same-day ready.

Nevertheless, there is one issue that is commonly associated with the age of immediate commerce. That is the market to margin squeeze, with next day delivery costing 20% more than standard delivery for retailers. As a result of this, around 60% of online transactions include free shipping, so as to encourage people to not abandon their orders.

This is where technology come into play. Automation in place of manual processes reduces error rates, cuts the time it takes to complete tasks and improves scalability allowing warehouses to work at speed and efficiently. More efficient ways of working increases capacity to fulfil more orders than is possible with manual, labour-intensive processes. This opens the door to more business and thereby additional revenue and growth. Warehouses largely depend on their sorting systems to rapidly and accurately fulfil orders and it is here where we find automation, AI and robotics playing a central and transformative role.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by GreyOrange .