The COVID-19 crisis has changed the world completely in the last few months. The outbreak of the global coronavirus pandemic has changed the e-commerce & logistics industry in an instant. According to a research, 52 % of the consumers are avoiding going to crowded marketplaces and are leaving their houses a lot less due to the prevailing situation, hence, maintaining warehouse cleanliness is the need of the hour.
ClickPost and Unicommerce two of the biggest players of the supply chain industry in India have come together to create a report on the best practices to be followed by E-commerce and logistic industries to streamline their supply chain for the next two years:
Logistics:
It is important to ensure to have multiple courier partners as the industry will experience fluctuations in courier serviceability in the near future. Specifically, try to partner with intra city delivery partners. Identification of active pin-codes should happen over APIs and Courier selection should be done algorithmically.
To create a simplified customer experience, e-commerce companies should also consider activating order tracking notifications to keep customers updated. It is seen that an update message on the order tracking page reduces WISMO (where-is-my-order?) calls by up to 20%. Additionally, a consumer is expected to visit on the tracking page almost 2.4 times for every order. Another important consideration is consumer awareness. In the out of delivery notification, one should mention the safety precautions being taken by logistics partners to provide confidence to customers to accept the delivery & avoid RTO.
Warehouses:
Starting from diversifying the logistics resources by anticipating that there will be fluctuations in courier serviceability in the near future, due to many localized or nationwide reasons. Limiting the workforce in warehouses, providing appropriate PPE kits to employees to the regular checkup of the employees’ temperature. In logistics, activate order tracking notifications to customers to keep them updated along with the ‘Out for delivery’ notification, mentioning the safety precautions being taken by logistics partners to provide confidence to customers to accept the delivery & avoid RTO.
Introducing RFIDs scanning over traditional barcoding system real-time communication between WMS and existing ERP/POS systems to ensure error-free dispatches of goods to the customers. Investing in Robust Analytics to ensure you have full visibility on key metrics of warehouse operations such as per person productivity, fulfilment metrics, space utilization etc.
Pranshu Kacholia VP, Business, Clickpost said “Our objective is to provide the best services to our clients and partners. The retail world, with the current pandemic, is moving online at an unprecedented level. Hence, warehouse management Softwares and logistics management Softwares need to work closely to provide end to end automation as well as strategic insights for operations teams of e-commerce companies.
We are glad to partner with Unicommerce and have come up with this report that helps and put these practices in a clear perspective and understanding to help organizations establish the right plan in the face of the unexpected. With this partnership, we intend to bring Amazon-like operational excellence to all the e-commerce retailers”
He also added that “Digitization ensures that the e-commerce company has full visibility on key metrics of warehouse and logistics operation such as cost of fulfilment and delivery percentage”
