Discover how fully integrated systems are the key to fulfilment success.

Feeling like you’re trapped in a race?

If it sometimes feels to you that the fulfilment industry is locked in a race, then it’s the customers who are setting the pace. Keeping up might feel like a struggle, but falling behind is simply not an option.

There are a lot of factors influencing customer behaviour, shaping customer expectations, and ultimately putting pressure on retail fulfilment to keep up. Understanding these themes and issues is key to understanding how to thrive in this new, fast-changing retail and fulfilment landscape. It may also be key to understanding why you’re struggling to keep up.

Looking back to look forward

Roll back the clock by 10 years or so. There are no smartphones as we now know them - the first iPhone won’t be along for another year, and it’ll be 12 months later before Android phones hit the market. Online shopping is done on PCs and laptops, and not every retailer yet has an ecommerce offering. Delivery has moved on from the really old days of ‘30 days post & packaging’, but three-to-five days is fairly standard, and you’ll be doing well to find a click and collect option.

Compare that with the way things are now, and you immediately see the scale of the problem the fulfilment sector has had to contend with.

Shoppers in 2016 expect to be able to shop online 24 hours a day, and they expect a full range of delivery or collection choices - from same-day to named-day, on-the-fly changes, and the option to send items wherever they want them.

Passing shoppers’ expectations on to the client

As shoppers’ expectations continue to set the service bar ever higher, retailers have added more and more options and choices to their delivery and collection offer - and in so doing they pass the expectation buck onto their fulfilment partners. The net effect of that has tended to be the appearance of add-on services, teams, or even whole business units, creating a data administration headache for the fulfilment business as a whole.

You always need to know what’s going on

If you’re looking after multiple clients, with different SLAs, varying product needs and shipping requirements, you can’t afford the luxury of not really knowing what is happening in real-time. If you’re not running an IT system that can pull in disparate data feeds and spit out concise, actionable information, you’re opening yourself up to unnecessary risk.

When order information comes in it needs to be actioned instantly and accurately. There’s no place for the swivel chair shuffle anymore, when someone takes data from one machine, spins their chair and inputs it into another one. Similarly, if you’re comparing pick times, or analysing route information, you need accurate, real-time information that gives you one simple, powerful view of what’s going on, where any problems may lie, and where you need to make changes.

If are you getting reports from different teams or locations, which take several days after month-end, then require painstaking comparison and analysis, you could be halfway through the month before you’re able to make any decisions, by which time things have moved on, problems have gone unchecked.

This kind of manual intervention invites delays and errors, both of which are inherently costly concerns. There are other, sometimes less obvious, costs too. Operating multiple systems across your business, and then adding a layer on top to introduce a degree of integration, for example. This can involve multiple sets of software licenses, maintenance agreements, systems administrators, and so on.

Remember

Adding layer upon layer may seem like it’s helping you keep up, but like a long-distance runner that’s set off too quickly from the start, you’re heading for trouble eventually. This is a race that has no finishing line, so you’d going to need to be at the top of your game - agile, flexible and ready for the long haul.

Takeaways:

• Order information needs to be actioned instantly and accurately.
• Adding layer on layer of systems will eventually lead to problems.
• Retrospective comparison of data ultimately reduces your ability to solve problems within your business.

Discover what future challenges the fulfilment industry will face and how you can overcome them. Download the first of our two part guide, Fulfilment in the UK, Challenges, Solutions and Future Proofing.