Coming off a year that found both carriers and shippers struggling to piece together logistics and transportation strategies in an extremely disruptive environment, many companies came into 2021 with the hope that things might get easier in the New Year.
Right now, all shippers are worried about getting packages out the door, onto trucks, and into their customers’ hands during the busy holiday season. Laser-focused on the fourth quarter, these companies should also be thinking about 2021, what new impacts it will bring, and what they can be doing now to prepare for these impacts.
In today’s retail environment, the online and brick-and-mortar roles are reversing. The Internet is becoming the storefront, and in the last months of 2020, half of holiday shoppers plan to use curbside or contactless pickup. The store is evolving into the new-age version of the traditional cross-dock, where forward inventory moves through a central point coordinating the transfer. There are more SKUs listed on a retailer’s website than the average store carries on shelves or in back rooms. A consumer searching for unique, hard-to-find products will likely see them, and buy them, online rather than at a store.
Shipping used to be a linear exercise. A manufacturer shipped products to a distribution center. From there, the products were delivered to stores. The shipper, not the consumer, was in charge of the transaction.
Much like a successful marriage, the relationship between a shipper and its logistics partner has to be mutually-beneficial, trust-based and productive. Without these qualities, one or both parties will quickly find themselves wondering why they entered into the agreement.
If you can’t pinpoint which products are and aren’t making your company money, it’s time for a thorough SKU-level profitability assessment.
To strike the balance between complying with COVID-related shutdowns, fulfilling their customers’ orders and preserving their bottom lines, organizations across most industries revved up their e-commerce engines and began doing more business online in early-2020.
You may not be able to keep parcel carriers from imposing unexpected peak season cost changes, but you can prepare to manage surcharges. The key is to understand your shipping data, work with trusted partners, and protect profitability by responding quickly.
The role of e-commerce in keeping the United States and world economies going was never more evident than during the first half of 2020. Before the global pandemic and the lock-downs and shelter-in-place orders that followed, e-commerce comprised about 12 percent of U.S. retail sales. That percentage will grow dramatically in the years ahead. Consumers who once gathered in malls and stores to do their buying found that e-commerce had become their only buying source, almost overnight. Many who had never tried online purchasing found it easy and convenient. Retail will never be the same again. Never.
In Albert Einstein’s famous equation “E=mc2,” both energy and mass are replaceable with one another. But the constant measurement of time cannot be changed.What he essentially confirmed for generations beyond him is the inherent value of time. We cannot slow down time, nor can we control the passing of time. We can change how we react in the present, and use lessons learned to affect chain reactions as they happen in time.
