Member Article

Five Priorities for omnichannel retail supply chains

The opportunity is impossible to ignore. E-commerce sales worldwide are expected to grow from $2.9 trillion in 2018 to $6.5 trillion by 2023, according to Statista.

Through it all, retailers – like most organisations – also want to increase their bottom lines and cut costs, all while managing the growing onslaught of e-commerce returns. In fact, the volume of inventory that retailers must write off at the end of the year has become so significant that they’re looking at how they can move to a “one-inventory model” with more advanced fulfilment science that allows them to cut their costs and reduce their losses.

As the retail industry continues to evolve and is faced with these new challenges, there are essential components that must be embedded into all omnichannel retail supply chains to be successful. Here are five key elements that all retailers should be incorporating into their demand driven omnichannel supply chain strategies:

1. A Single Inventory View Across Multiple Channels
2. Multiple Hierarchies of Inventories
3. A Common Hardware and Software Infrastructure
4. Good Resource Utilization Across All Channels
5. A System that can Quickly Adapt to Change

In today’s age of immediacy, the term ‘storage’ is an obsolete concept – all inventory should be visible and accessible. To enable high yield, omnichannel fulfilment, retailers are adopting automated mobile platforms and high yield fulfilment operating systems to help them meet the demands of consumers for faster and cheaper delivery without the need for more human labour.

As the lines continue to blur between offline and online sales, and as companies continue to tackle issues like the warehouse space crunch, persistent labour shortage, and the Amazon Effect, the need for automated fulfilment strategies will continue to rise. More demanding than in-store buyers, 30% of online buyers in the U.S. will take their business elsewhere after just one poor service experience, according to an American Express survey.

Using the five strategies outlined, retailers can effectively design omnichannel supply chains that not only help them efficiently meet their customers’ ever-changing needs, but also ensure cost-effective, on-time, accurate fulfilment in a world that demands it.

About GreyOrange

GreyOrange is a global company that modernises order fulfilment through Artificial Intelligence-driven software and mobile robots, built together so they cooperate in deciding on and executing warehouse activities that maximize payoffs and minimize trade-offs to create the highest yield.

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