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There have been tremendous shifts in e-commerce in the last two years. The COVID-19 pandemic has revolutionized the e-commerce industry and has brought dynamism to this field.
The pandemic played a significant role in catalyzing the growth of the e-commerce market and enabling access to a wide range of products without the need to step out of the house.
Despite the strict COVID contact restrictions, e-commerce companies have continued their operations with concepts like 'Contactless Delivery.'
Recent shift in E-commerce
E-commerce transactions have witnessed a massive shift from luxury goods to essential goods during the pandemic. Moreover, the changes brought by COVID to the e-commerce business will likely continue in the future.
For example, the buying habits learned during the pandemic may continue if the world faces another pandemic wave. Therefore, the long-lasting impact of the pandemic on the e-commerce industry proves to be an accelerator for e-commerce firms.
The unprecedented expansion of e-commerce has also prevented physical store interactions that significantly impacted offline stores. Since people preferred online shopping as a COVID-safe way of buying goods, the brick-and-mortar store saw a considerable decline.
In addition, the worldwide lockdown made it worse for the physical-store owners. This transition from brick-mortar retail to virtual stores has been seen globally.
E-commerce Statistics
As per key e-commerce statistics, A difference in consumer behavior on e-commerce platforms was seen during COVID-19. Hygiene and healthcare products such as medicines, hand sanitizers, and toilet paper disappeared from the virtual stores in no time.
On the other hand, online sales experienced a spike in household cleaning products by 40% and food and drinks by 31%. Additionally, the demand for '2-day delivery' and 'same-day' delivery was huge, and consumers responded to these delivery concepts.
The panic-buying behavior of consumers amidst the pandemic led them to buy more and expect faster deliveries. Therefore, giving rise to the quick delivery concepts.
E-commerce statistics show that in 2020, the United States experienced a 32.4% increase in e-commerce sales (retail), a whopping $791.7 billion rise from $598.0 billion.
According to a global survey carried out by McKinsey, first-time users adopting online shopping drove around a 50% increase in grocery online shopping experience.
Furthermore in e-commerce statistics, according to a study by US Census Bureau, online retail sales in North America also increased by 50%. This overall growth in e-commerce led to a global expansion of warehouses in terms of space and units.
As per Warehouse Building Stock Database - a global warehouse assessment states that, in 2020, there were only 150,000 warehouses across the globe that offered a space of 25 billion square feet.
This figure is expected to skyrocket to 33 billion square feet, adding a 5.2% increase year-on-year by 2025. These e-commerce statistics show the rise of e-commerce sales across the globe.
Impact of E-commerce on Supply Chain
The impact of e-commerce on the supply chain can be understood as an increase in volatility. That is so because anyone can order anything at any time from anywhere. As there is no certainty as to which product will start trending, it is hard for business owners to predict the demand and supply of goods. Additionally, the search engine algorithm disrupts the brand's visibility.
For example, during the pandemic, there was an unexpected surge in demand for consumer-packaged goods used in hospitals for COVID-19 patients. Brands did not see this coming and were unaware of the sudden need.
Similarly, it created volatility in the demand and supply of several other essential goods. Therefore, the shift to online ordering has caused difficulty managing inventory due to unpredictability in consumer demands.
Furthermore, in the global supply chain, businesses source goods internationally. As consumers expect quick deliveries of their orders, the supply chain management must be in proper control. This process includes buying the materials, shipping them, and managing foreign goods domestically.
Supply chain strategies for E-commerce
1. Adapting multi-supplier strategy
Depending on a single geographic location or supplier for sourcing inventory is risky. If one relies on a single supplier to save extra cost, it can increase expenditure if that supplier faces an issue or is capacity constrained to deliver the required goods.
Therefore, in such a scenario, implementing a multiple-supplier strategy is helping in reducing the buying dependency on the single supplier and supply risks.
2. Strategic warehouse placement
Physical proximity is an essential factor determining the feasibility of reaching out to shoppers. That's precisely where strategic warehouse placement comes into the picture. The warehouse placement is vital in offering quick deliveries to customers.
Strategic warehousing means placing warehouses or warehouses close to high-density urban areas. This strategic positioning of the warehouses dramatically reduces local shipping costs and allows the business to offer 'same-day' delivery to its customers.
Ultimately, saving shipping costs will help the business gain good profits and provide free shipping to shoppers, thus offering a competitive advantage.
3. Having inventory and capacity buffers
A resilient supply chain always has a buffer to address the sudden surge in sales of a particular product. While buffers might seem expensive and not convincing, they can be profitable when the demand for that inventory rises.
Businesses can contract manufacturers and address their requirements. Besides, buffer capacity can be helpful during expansion to new growth areas or while a new product launches.
4. Near-shoring
Sourcing inventory locally can appear costly. But local suppliers can help a business have enhanced inventory control and push the product closer to the consumers faster.
Although local supply can add plenty of complexity to the system, it does contribute to offering quick deliveries. Over-dependencies on some geographical regions, especially global dependency, lead to longer cycle times for finished products.
Warehousing and Fulfillment changes with E-commerce
More than ever, the demand for warehouses and distribution centers is rapidly increasing. As a result, today's warehouses have seen a reasonable transformation in size, location, operation, and specification.
The two significant components in efficient warehousing and fulfillment are the locations of the warehouses and links to the distribution network. The impact of e-commerce on warehouses and fulfillment centers has caused a significant rise in large regional warehouses, usually away from the cities.
At the same time, urban e-commerce logistic facilities and fulfillment centers have also rapidly grown due to the tremendous demand for 'same-day' and 'two-day delivery.'
Therefore, e-commerce providers are placing such e-commerce fulfillment centers at multiple locations to satisfy the quick delivery expectations of their consumers.
How warehouses and FCs adapt to e-commerce changes
1. Creating flexibility
E-commerce has obliged warehouses and fulfillment centers to become flexible and agile. Agility is essential to ensure timely deliveries to the end consumers.
In addition, distribution centers and urban fulfillment facilities must be flexible enough to handle the volatility and trends amplified by social media.
Therefore, strategically placing the warehouses and fulfillment centers contributes to the increased flexibility in delivering the goods.
2. Adopting a holistic approach
Before a product reaches the end-consumer, it undergoes numerous operations like designing, packaging, storing, transporting, etc. If the product is sent to different places to complete each process, it would require a lot of time and cost.
On the contrary, if most product operations are carried out under one roof, it would result in a massive saving in cost, time, and effort, thus, resulting in enhanced agility.
For example, photography of a product for online advertising can be done at the warehouse studio rather than sending it to a new facility for photography.
3. Eliminating manual processes
Automating manual processes is a vital step toward sustaining the impact of ecommerce tools and services on warehouses and fulfillment. By getting rid of the manual and paper-based processes, errors and inefficiency of operations are significantly reduced.
Furthermore, companies can systematically streamline warehouse activities and quickly execute functional alterations or changes.
In addition, a reduction in manual processes results in fewer warehouse associates/staff requirements, which contributes to maintaining social distancing and following covid precautions.
4. Making return transactions seamless
With the unprecedented growth in online sales, the number of items returned to the warehouse has also spiked. More items returned means more warehouse space is required to accommodate the returned goods.
The ability to enable quick returns and bring the product back into the inventory system is a competitive advantage for e-commerce fulfillment companies. Besides, creating excellent return experiences for potential customers can make your shoppers repeat customers and increase sales in the long term.
According to reports by the National Retail Federation, 18.1% of items purchased online in 2020 were returned. But the 'easy return policy' of E-commerce businesses led to superior customer experiences and made them repeat customers.
Businesses should have clear return policies, pay for return shipping, and accept returns via shipments to enable seamless returns.
5. 24/7 Operations
E-commerce never sleeps. To handle the pressure of continuous online orders, warehouses must carry out their operations 24/7. As a result, warehouses must adapt to 'open-all-hours' working patterns to manage timely deliveries of the increasing number of orders daily.
6. High-speed Picking
Warehouse order-picking technology is a crucial component in e-commerce warehouse management. Speed has become the single-most driving factor and a challenge that has made e-commerce a competitive industry.
Speed and accuracy in picking and execution can help the business stand out from its competitors. nowadays, customer expectations have reached to error-free quick delivery of their orders. Therefore, accurate picking is crucial to lower return rates and create a satisfying experience.
Strategic practices like batch picking (picking all identical orders at once), reducing manual entry, and order item validation is best adapted for e-commerce fulfillment at the warehouse for high-speed picking.
Why don’t legacy WMS work for modern E-commerce?
Implementing comprehensive warehouse management software can save time and effort and improve efficiency. On the other hand, one of the drawbacks of legacy WMS is that it doesn't allow companies to work at maximum potential and efficiency.
Therefore, modern e-commerce businesses must leave many checklists that push them behind competitors.
Legacy warehouse management system prevents businesses from understanding their inefficient operations that outweigh their drawbacks. As a result, upgrading to the latest WMS can bring holistic progress and efficiency in warehouse management.
Reasons why legacy WMS is not the right fit for e-commerce:
1. Not built for the e-commerce age
The order mix of e-commerce is complex and has versatile products with high order velocity. Also, pallet picking and shorter lead times are expected for e-commerce orders. Legacy warehouse management system fails to fulfill the e-commerce age requirements, making them less usable today.
2. Closed ecosystems with pre-built integrations
WMS of the e-commerce age needs features like advanced inventory tracking, acquiring real-time data of inventory, warehouse space optimization using AI, dynamic resource allocation, and other automated features to survive the e-commerce competition.
Legacy warehouse management systems cannot integrate with multiple online and offline sales channels, carriers, hardware, and robots. They are closed ecosystems and incompatible with new technologies.
Moreover, reconfiguring them is time-consuming and expensive. Therefore, using them would result in reduced agility and scalability.
3. Lack of analytics and insights
Big data wasn't popular when legacy WMS was built, as collecting and processing big data wasn't practiced then. As a result, there needed to be more information and better access to deep insights into warehouse operations.
Poor insights into warehousing data ultimately lead to drifting away from making crucial data-driven business decisions.
4. Lack of inbuilt intelligence
Precise inventory tracking, finding misplaced items, guiding toward reliable business-decision with verifiable data, and other inbuilt intelligence features should be present in legacy warehouse management systems.
Yet, these AI-based tools are today's critical business drivers for the e-commerce industry. Therefore, the need for such technology is a significant disadvantage for the top e-commerce fulfillment companies.
Besides, poor scalability, inability to offer off-the-shelf solutions, and reduced traceability are AI-related drawbacks of legacy WMS.
What do E-commerce operations need a modern WMS?
Upgrading to the latest warehouse management system has become a necessity for the e-commerce industry. More than ever, the need for a WMS, full-fledged with advanced technologies, is crucial.
In addition, businesses need an easy-to-use warehouse management system that can translate warehouse operations into more straightforward, efficient, and innovative tasks.
The following are the critical components of a modern warehouse management system for e-commerce:
1. Distributed Order Management
Distributed order management optimizes fulfillment for customers' timely and cost-effective order deliveries. So, to carry out this task, distributed order management systems help automate several operations, like,
- Order routing
- Order shipping
- Inventory management
- Inventory forecasting
- Reordering
Besides, online shoppers can order from multiple platforms/channels or even within an online store. Therefore, a distributed order management (DOM) system makes it easier to manage omnichannel retail and meet product demand. Moreover, DOM can be integrated with modern warehouse management systems.
2. Advanced Inventory Management
The modern WMS has advanced real-time inventory management capabilities and allows multi-channel inventory synchronization. This e-commerce inventory management software helps monitor inventory availability throughout all channels and warehouses.
The inventory is updated based on the daily orders received from all media. Similarly, when new stock is brought to the warehouse, it updates the 'out-of-stock' products after replenishment.
- Overall, the advanced e-commerce inventory management system contributes in terms of the following:
- Using AI algorithms that can efficiently plan optimal inventory placement
- Automating manual tasks like back orders or replenishment processes
- Preventing Stock-out or Dead-stock situations
- Predicting future inventory consumption patterns and increasing cash flow
- Boosting warehouse productivity
3. Prebuilt Integrations
Compatibility is the key to a modern warehouse management system. Today's WMS allows integration with various selling tools and online and offline selling channels, including online marketplaces and web-store platforms.
Furthermore, it also enables seamless integration with shipping carriers and warehouse hardware for barcodes, RFID, printers, and picking robots.
4. Picking and Packing Automation
The modern warehouse management system should have the pick/pack capability to reduce order lead times and lower shipping and packing costs with analytical packing recommendations.
- Picking - It supports several picking strategies like Pick to light, Pick by Vision, Robotic picking, and Goods to person. In addition, the AI technology optimizes picker routes, measures picking accuracy picking rate, and gives vital insights for picking operations.
- Packing - The WMS automates the entire packing cycle, reduces packing time, and provides box packing recommendations while optimizing shipping costs for e-commerce fulfillment providers. Besides, it helps with quick printing guides and other packing materials.
5. Flexibility
Coding a program is undoubtedly time-consuming and needs technical expertise. However, the modern WMS offers an excellent no-code interface that gives exceptional flexibility by configuring business rules with no coding.
This flexibility can help a business offer competitive e-commerce fulfillment pricing. In addition, it allows one to configure business rules at the company level and support multiple flows within single or multiple warehouses.
6. Robotic Integration
E-commerce operations of today's era need enhanced device management capabilities. Modern warehouse management allows faster integrations with robots, AIDC devices, and automation hardware.
These features bridge the gap between humans and machines and help to monitor all devices with no custom code.
It prevents device failures and unexpected downtimes of the hardware. Detailed insights into devices contribute to the productive use of devices and optimal failure handling.
Conclusion
The e-commerce industry has seen tremendous competition in the past couple of years. With this ever-increasing rivalry, it has become crucial for e-commerce players to adopt the latest e-commerce warehouse management software to survive in the business.
Automating all the warehouse elements and implementing more innovative ways to function warehouse operations is the doorway to a future-proof e-commerce business.
Thus, it's high time companies start implementing advanced technologies like AI and Big data to optimize their warehouse operations and bring efficiency in all aspects of e-commerce warehousing and order fulfillment.
Hopstack Inc helps to take one's e-commerce business to the next level. We provide holistic, AI-powered digital warehouse software for automating warehouse management and execution.
Our platform has helped top e-commerce fulfillment companies to simplify operations and optimize warehouse management.
Get in touch with our expert product specialist to understand Hopstack's Software Suite and how it can skyrocket your business with our best e-commerce fulfillment services.
