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7 Ways to Update Your Supply Chain Strategy for 2022

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3pls, Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily

7 Ways to Update Your Supply Chain Strategy for 2022

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The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the logistical landscape forever. There have been significant channel shifts due to renewed consumer behavior, the speed of orders, and delivery standard expectations. Amidst all this pandemonium, supply chains had to evolve years in a span of months just to keep up with this significant paradigm shift. 

Companies have moved away from low-cost supply chains and towards a much more resilient and agile framework. 87 percent of supply chain leaders are looking to invest in resilience in the coming years. As a result, the adaptation of next-gen transportation and logistics strategy solutions has made supply chains faster, smarter, and user-centric. Moreover, the logistics industry is evolving at an alarming rate and is said to reach a valuation of $12,256 billion by 2022. 

Since adroit logistics are reshaping the whole supply chain, what should you look forward to in 2022 and beyond? Read on to know more about seven different ways you can make your supply chain strategy even better!

Importance & benefits of a good supply chain strategy

In light of this new normal brought by the pandemic, it is of the essence that all companies, no matter the size, adapt a supply chain component. But why? Well, let’s delve into that for a bit.

Keeps costs and service quality in balance 

Customer satisfaction is key to the success of any business. But that might mean having goods in stock at all times. This might lead to overproduction and wastage of resources. With a good supply chain management (SCM) strategy in place, this can be avoided. The company shall save money and keep customers happy at the same time. 

Higher efficiency rate  

Data-driven SCM provides real-time data on the availability of raw materials and manufacturing delays. Hence, companies implement a ‘plan B’ instead of meeting these hurdles with empty hands. Out-of-stock inventory and late shipments won’t be an issue anymore. 

Encourages business development  

With an effective data-driven SCM strategy in place, you can analyze your past dealings with vendors. You can compare prices, quality of services, raw materials, etc., and realize improvement areas. Work on them and achieve your business goals efficiently. 

7 ways to better your supply chain strategy for 2022

Higher visibility 

Increased visibility into your supply chain’s transportation spend is a must. By doing so, you can improve on your weaknesses, control costs, and make effective, impactful data-driven decisions. In fact, 50 percent of global product-centric companies will have implemented real-time transportation visibility platforms. But why so?

Well, the answer lies in two parts. Firstly, they allow customers to track their orders in real-time. This meets the renewed customer expectations and makes the work of the customer support team a little easier. Secondly, the customer support team can deliver invaluable insights into your transportation costs and overall performance. 

Total visibility into your transportation spend is a gateway to optimize carrier selection, carrier rates, contract management, etc. Not only that, but you now have a stream of high-quality data that can help improve your business intelligence and make smarter data-driven decisions to cut costs further. 

Increased resiliency 

A resilient supply chain can be the only thing standing between a company’s success or failure. A bold claim? For sure. But is it wrong? Absolutely not. An effective, agile, and resilient supply chain management strategy can be a massive sales enabler and a significant driver to the company’s profit margin and growth opportunities. 

You need to optimize your transportation spending to understand where you are directing your money and root out all the unnecessary expenses. By controlling the costs within the supply chain, you can cut many costs and direct that money towards optimizing the areas that require improvement. Provided your supply chain management strategy is spot-on, you can make data-driven and impactful decisions and secure your place at the top of your industry. 

Optimized logistical networks 

The supply chain industry has recently seen a shift to omnichannel. The logistical disruptions caused due to the ongoing pandemic have accelerated this process by a considerable extent. According to a report by Gartner, 76 percent of supply chain professionals claim to have experienced an increase in disruption events in the past three years. 

72 percent of them also stated that the impact of these events has also increased. Hence, optimizing your logistical network for agility and resilience has become vital to maintain and multiply your customer base. Due to the ongoing pandemic, most customers have adapted to online shopping or buying online and picking up at stores (BOPUS). 

Although in-store shopping hasn’t completely disappeared, this new normal demands you to constantly keep up with customer orders and restock retailer inventory. Companies seem to be juggling between global, regional, and local networks to enable quicker delivery times. Hence, 90 percent of US retailers and consumer goods companies plan to change and optimize their supply chain network to increase efficiency. 

Better risk mitigation 

Risk mitigation is essential to maintain your customer base and the integrity of your supply chain. This point can’t be stressed enough post the onset of the pandemic. Over 28 percent of companies experienced a stock shortage in the first few months of the pandemic. This can damage your brand identity and have a detrimental effect on your customer base and market share. On top of this, damages, delayed shipments, inadequate storage environments, etc., can worsen the situation. 

You need to evaluate and identify the current risks to your company, prioritize them by probability and impact, and approach them accordingly. For example, optimizing and automating freight audits can act as a potent risk mitigator, as it eliminates errors, averts delays based on discrepancies, and streamlines operations. 

Digital supply chain adoption 

Supply chains have been very sluggish in adopting digital transformation. But the pandemic has been a wake-up call. With the digitization of almost everything in sight, supply chains need to undergo complete change management to stay afloat and keep up with the changing times. 

But what is change management? Change management is a collective term for all structured processes and approaches used to prepare, support, and help organizations make a complete organizational change. Managers today need to understand its tenets and create a seamless digital transformation. This is extremely necessary as only 1 percent of world supply chain leaders have an extensive digital supply chain system in place. 

With proper change management and digital supply chain tech adoption, this number is expected to shoot up to 23 percent by 2025. But people generally misinterpret the meaning of a digital supply chain. It is not just pushing spreadsheets onto a platform. 

It refers to the development and implementation of advanced technologies cloud-based computing, IoT, blockchain, ML, AI, etc.) to drive improvements in traditional supply chains. Implementation of such technology will reduce errors, improve resource efficiency, and provide valuable insights. 

Reliance on real-time data

Organizational silos can be detrimental to the smooth functioning of your company. Employees might become more insular and distrustful of other departments, making it challenging to work with other groups. Real-time data is the only way to break down these organizational silos as they offer complete transparency within your supply chain’s transportation spend. 

According to a study conducted by Forbes, 84 percent of supply chain leaders claim that real-time data has helped them break down silos across the entire value chain. Real-time data can allow you to control cost centers, measure performance, address procedural gaps, improve decision making, and boost overall team and company performance. 

With the pandemic still at large, the remote work culture makes maintaining transparency and leveraging accurate real-time data even more critical. This is to ensure that your transportations spend management keeps running smoothly and fruitfully. 

Increased disruptions 

The first nine months of 2020 experienced a massive 4200 disruptions to global supply chains, 14 percent higher than 2019. With disruptions set to keep increasing, supply chains must adapt and evolve to survive. Investing in supply chain resilience is an absolute must for 2022. 

Also, climate change is making it more and more necessary to adopt digital solutions within supply chain management. According to a WHO, UNDP, and IPCC report, climate change has increased heat in the workplace and has reduced labor productivity by 20%. Hence, our reliance on software solutions has to proliferate to unburden human resources and prevent productivity loss.

Implementing an agile approach to supply chain transformation

An agile supply chain is a supply chain of the future. Supply chains must encompass the ability to achieve more in a shorter time, adopting new digital technologies. All end-to-end processes, such as planning, manufacturing, logistics, etc., must be backed by the latest technologies. 

A more traditional supply chain will be rendered obsolete and must undergo complete change management to keep up with the rapid digitization of the industry. Process re-engineering (radical redesign of business processes) and adaptation of software solutions to cater to the company’s specific needs will pave the way for an impeccable supply chain management strategy. 

___________________________________________________________

Hazel Raoult is a freelance marketing writer and works with PRmention. She has 6+ years of experience in writing about business, entrepreneurship, marketing, and all things SaaS. Hazel loves to split her time between writing, editing, and hanging out with her family.

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Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily

10 Reasons to Embrace Enterprise Marketplaces

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Sellers must think strategically to unlock the power of these powerful new ecommerce technologies.

The pandemic sparked a surge in online selling — and not just by DTC brands serving customers while they were hunkered down at home. The B2B digital commerce space has also seen massive growth over the past two years, a trend that has only been accelerated by the rise of enterprise marketplaces.

What is an enterprise marketplace? Well, we’re all familiar with online marketplaces such as Amazon, Etsy, or eBay that focus solely on connecting buyers and sellers. An enterprise marketplace does much the same, but it’s typically run by an organization that wants to sell its own products and services to customers, and creates a marketplace to offer complimentary products, strengthen its partner networks, or create a better experience for its customers.

The world of enterprise marketplaces is remarkably diverse, including multi-vendor marketplaces, procurement-focused marketplaces, and branded marketplaces. In all cases, though, the enterprise marketplace approach is a powerful paradigm that’s changing the way that organizations sell online. Let’s take a closer look at some of the key benefits that well-run enterprise marketplaces deliver for their operators, vendors, and customers:

1. New revenue streams. Subscriptions, transaction fees, and value-add services or support charges enable marketplace operators to collect revenues without managing their own inventory or building out warehouses. Frankfurt Airport, for instance, invested in an online marketplace, and now collects membership fees from airport retailers who list products and offer promotions to passengers.

2. Customer experiences. Marketplaces are a great way to expand from B2B into B2B2C, or D2C models while still delivering engaging experiences. Andikem, the chemical fulfillment marketplace, achieves this by providing supply-chain transparency and fulfillment efficiency, keeping prices low for buyers.

3. Elimination of pain points. Marketplaces can offer solutions to customer headaches in areas such as supply chain and fulfillment. DOZR set up its WebStores marketplace to address an unmet need by helping construction contractors to rent equipment more easily, and now connects 15,000 suppliers with hundreds of thousands of customers.

4. Smarter procurement. Marketplaces are a perfect solution for complex procurement scenarios, helping buyers such as large companies or government agencies to coordinate across multiple divisions, subsidiaries, or business units while maintaining strict ordering processes. SupplyCore, the logistics solutions company, achieves this with a digital platform that manages complex orders without manual input, enabling customers to track order status from quote to delivery.

5. Streamlined purchasing. Marketplaces can support complex B2B purchasing arrangements, improving efficiency and lowering costs for everyone. Tundra Restaurant Supply, for instance, has built a flexible marketplace that allows it to offer customized experiences, discounts, and free shipping even for big buyers such as Chipotle.

6. Better franchise relationships. Franchise businesses can use an enterprise marketplace model to create a collaborative environment, maintain visibility into franchisor-franchisee relationships, and improve outcomes for customers. French retail franchise V and B does this well: their cloud-first marketplace centralizes inventory and streamlines operations for HQ, franchises, and suppliers.

7. Expanded product offerings. With competition growing, mass-market retailers are increasingly creating marketplaces to grow their product offerings. Walmart Marketplace, Amazon’s biggest US challenger, now uses its 5,000 brick-and-mortar stores as a value-add: vendors get a chance to sell in-store, and shoppers get access to a far wider array of products.

8. Better use of existing assets. Organizations with a large distribution footprint can maximize their assets with a marketplace. Target, for instance, leverages its distribution and store network to power its invite-only Target Plus marketplace, and promotes hand-picked brands across its Target.com and mobile ecosystem.

9. Better product information. Enterprise marketplaces can elevate product presentation — a valuable proposition for B2Bs with large SKUs and complex offerings. PartsBase, the world’s largest aircraft parts marketplace, delivers value by maintaining detailed product information for 15 billion parts spanning 100,000,000 inventory lines.

10.  A stronger ecosystem. Businesses with large partner networks can use marketplaces to centralize and enable collaboration. Toyota Material Handling achieved this by gathering over 200 certified dealers on its platform, delivering a more engaging partner experience and ensuring a better product selection for end-users.

Think strategically

Unlocking these benefits doesn’t happen all by itself. Organizations need to think strategically about their enterprise marketplaces in order to get the most bang for their buck.

That starts with building out the operational infrastructure you need to succeed, including clear purchasing processes, fulfillment workflows, and payment systems. You’ll also need to communicate clearly with all stakeholders, including your outside partners and your own employees, in order to make sure that everyone understands the strategic goal of the marketplace and is committed to pulling in the same direction.

Operators also need to go into the process of building a marketplace with clear eyes, and an understanding that creating a successful marketplace requires committing serious resources. From building out digital infrastructure to retraining employees and engaging with partners, you’ll need to invest if you’re going to build a successful marketplace — and the amounts needed can be a dealbreaker for brands that aren’t sufficiently mature or ambitious.

Finally, you’ll need to develop the right toolkit. Fortunately, that doesn’t mean building everything yourself: these days, there are a wide range of marketplace management platforms to choose from. Many marketplace tools are designed to support conventional marketplace operators, though, and don’t include the features needed for enterprise operations. Be sure you do your due diligence, and select a marketplace solution that’s designed to support the specific needs of B2B and enterprise operators.

Plan for success

The bottom line is that enterprise marketplaces are changing the way that businesses of all kinds buy and sell online. That’s potentially a lucrative opportunity for operators — including manufacturers, distributors, retailers, franchisors, and even government actors.

The more crowded the enterprise marketplace grows, though, the more competitive the space will become. That means new and existing operators will need a careful and measured strategic approach in order to gain a foothold and build a successful marketplace.

When you’re thinking about the potential benefits of running an enterprise marketplace, then, it’s important to plan ahead. Focus in on exactly what you’re hoping to achieve — and develop the strategy, partnerships, and toolkit you need to achieve your own specific goals.

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Yoav Kutner is the CEO and co-founder of Oro, Inc, which has created OroCommerce, the No.1 open-source eCommerce platform built for distributors, wholesalers, brands, and manufacturers. Yoav previously co-founded and served as the CTO of Magento.

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Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, Special Reports

Prep for the Holiday Season with Top E-commerce Strategies

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The most wonderful time of the year…is here. You already know that the holiday shopping season is the most critical period for retailers, both online and brick and mortar. How your business does during the last quarter of the year determines where things land for your bottom line.
 

This year, though, brand and e-commerce marketing managers are facing another wild ride, with uncertainty created by shifting trends. The pandemic brought on a surge in online buying, and many buyers are likely to continue to buy online. In fact, according to September 2021 survey data, consumers are planning a 50/50 split between online and brick-and-mortar buying. The retail giants—Amazon, Target, and Wal-Mart—are already capitalizing on convenience to hold onto their share of wallet.

 

There are other factors, though, to consider. Shopping trends are changing fast. News of supply chain pressures and worldwide shipping delays has spurred many shoppers to buy early or shift their buying behavior — 83% of shoppers intend to start before Thanksgiving this year, in a departure from the norm. In such an unpredictable market at such a high-stakes time of year, business intelligence has never mattered more. This is where the performance analytics platform Line Item can be the lifeline e-commerce marketers need right now to ensure they make the most of the holiday season.As we head into the heart of the 2021 holiday season, here are a few strategies to prepare and protect your digital shelf for the upcoming holidays.

Focus on organic search ranking. Whether they’re buying online or in person, many shoppers start their research online—on a smartphone or a tablet. This is why it’s essential to monitor and improve your online search ranking. Watch where you’re showing up, too. Moving from page 2 to page 1—and even into the top 10 listings—can significantly boost your sales. Improving your organic search ranking depends on visibility into what’s working—or not—for your brand. This is where Line Item can help, with detailed insight into what changes you could make to content, product descriptions, or imagery to affect your ranking in organic search results.

Analyze your paid search strategy. Shoppers are pressed for time, and you have only seconds to capture attention when it comes to search results. The holiday season is the time to invest in a robust paid search strategy, but you’ll want to be sure you understand what product attributes drive value. This is where Line Item can give you valuable campaign-level and product attribute insights. With them, you can better understand what’s driving the market and what your competitors are doing, so you can sharpen your edge and see ROI from a page-1 slot.Ensure your product detail pages are complete. This is a biggie. Incomplete or inconsistent product detail pages can harm you, whether we’re talking about Amazon listings or your own website. Across your e-commerce portfolio, all product detail pages should be complete, correct, and compelling. Line Item can help with this to make sure you aren’t overlooking clear areas or gaps that prevent you from meeting category bestseller benchmark standards.

Evaluate your SEO strategy and campaigns. During this volatile time of year, whims and demand drive the market in unpredictable ways. And that’s during a typical season, which 2021 is anything but. It’s essential to drill down to campaign elements, including CPCs, to ensure you have a read on how changing demand, sudden interest, or seasonality might be driving spend. E-analytics insight from Line Item can help you ensure your campaigns are profitable and that your overall marketing spend ultimately drives return on investment.

Watch out-of-stocks closely. Maintaining optimal inventory is key to profitability. When a customer is ready to buy and your product is out of stock, you lose the sale—and maybe the customer, too. Line Item helps you determine if out-of-stocks are hurting your revenue.

Track pricing. Many retailers are introducing new pricing strategies to drive sales this holiday season. Buy Now Pay Later is one of these, and it can appeal to segments like Gen Z and the unbanked, both of which are more price sensitive. The major retailers have already rolled out BNPL options; some have been in play since 2019. BNPL can affect pricing, so it’s important to monitor this. With Line Item, you can verify item pricing, selling price, and list price across platforms, ensuring that products are priced correctly even with new options like BNPL, and you can easily monitor third-party and competitor activity to protect your brand and products.

Of course, there are other strategies to consider, too—best practices like:

-Ensuring your checkout process is as easy as possible

-Providing access to customer service with tools like live chat, and with quick responses

-Creating engaging content, like gift guides

-Using targeting and segmentation to create personalized email campaigns

-Boosting sales with savvy retargeting

Using updated visuals and copy for featured holiday campaigns, and to ensure your site and product pages have that holiday look and feel, and more

This holiday season may be full of surprises, but your performance shouldn’t be one of them. The right insight can make or break your brand this holiday season, and business intelligence can give you what you need, when you need it. This is where Line Item really stands out as a single platform with insight into shopping trends and behavior, and what your competitors are doing—so you can finish 2021 in the black.

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3pls, Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, Warehousing

Generix Supply Chain Solution on Gartner Magic Quadrant

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A global provider of SaaS-based supply chain solutions, Generix Group has been recognized for the third year in a row among providers of WMS solutions with its inclusion in the 2021 Magic Quadrant for Warehouse Management Systems. 

A closely-followed series of market research publications produced by Gartner, the Magic Quadrant or “Gartner MQ” uses an evaluation matrix to analyze the positioning of technology-based companies, rate technology vendors based on defined criteria, and display vendor strengths and weaknesses, according to Techopedia.

Used to evaluate a vendor before a specific technology product, service, or solution is purchased, the Gartner MQ evaluates each vendor on vision completeness and execution ability. Digging down deeper, it classifies each vendor into four different quadrants: leaders, challengers, visionaries, and niche players.

Magic Quadrant for WMS

An industry-standard resource for supply chain professionals wanting unbiased research on the key players for advanced WMS solutions, the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Warehouse Management Systems is compiled based on the research firm’s rigorous methodology. With this information at their fingertips, companies can make a solid evaluation of WMS vendors based on multiple different criteria.

“The WMS market remains vibrant with vendors continuing to innovate,” Gartner points out. “Progress is being made in adaptability and support for automation while cloud services grow faster than the overall market. Supply chain technology leaders should use this (Gartner MQ) research to understand the current state of the WMS market.”

Gartner Magic Quadrants offer visual snapshots, in-depth analyses, and actionable advice that provide insight into a market’s direction, maturity, and participants. Magic Quadrants compare vendors based on Gartner’s standard criteria and methodology. Each report comes with a graphic that depicts a market using a two-dimensional matrix that evaluates vendors based on their completeness of vision and ability to execute.

Generix WMS Systems 

With two distinct WMS solutions, Solochain WMS and Generix WMS, Generix Group provides full-featured WMS functionality, high visibility and trackability, highly configurable automation platforms, and interactive on-the-job workforce training. The modern and intuitive visual interface supports real-time decision-making and critical business needs, including fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) as well as slow-moving consumer goods (SMCG) industries.

Working together with Locus Robotics, Generix recently rolled out automated warehouse solutions across Europe that include Locus’s innovative autonomous mobile robots (AMRs).

Furthermore, with ever-increasing changes in the industry, Generix can swiftly accommodate high growth needs from level-1 warehouse operations up to level 5, thus allowing hyper-growth for clients while digital transformation exponentially accelerates organic growth.

Solochain WMS is built on a scalable and flexible platform that powers its use as a warehouse management system, a manufacturing execution system, a transportation management system, and more. Highly configurable in terms of information layout, mobile workflow processes, reporting, and optimization rules, the WMS’ technological infrastructure is designed for maximum configuration flexibility and performance scalability.

Solochain WMS adapts and scales to meet a company’s needs all from within the same warehouse facility. It’s a highly flexible and adaptive warehouse management system that’s built for companies that need their supply chains to be nimble, efficient, and scaling, while ensuring execution excellence, compliance, and operational stability. And, for companies that perform product transformation (manufacturing, product kitting, etc.), Generix’s fully native Manufacturing Execution System (MES) can be enabled in WMS for complete inventory visibility throughout work-in-progress stages.

The Power of One  

Highlighting Generix’s strengths, Gartner says the company is expanding with a new entity in the Netherlands, a software engineering center in Romania, and its services center in Portugal. The company is also growing in North America with more than one-quarter of its business now outside its home geography.

“Solochain is well-suited to combination manufacturing and warehouse operations because it offers a seamlessly integrated WMS and MES,” Gartner says in its review. “This goes beyond simple transactional integration and addresses complexities of process integration between the warehouse and the shop floor.”

Gartner goes on to say that Generix Solochain offers powerful visual tools to facilitate, accelerate, and enhance implementations, and to provide ongoing support. It provides a model-driven architecture and back-office capabilities that document every client interaction in the application, facilitating upgrades.

According to one Gartner peerinsights user review, the company’s Solochain implementation was a multi-phased project. The first phase involved implementing the core WMS software and the second phase was the full integration with the firm’s existing ERP systems.

“The Solochain implementation team focused closely on our business process. Understanding the nature and rationale of our operations was the priority,” the company says. “Solochain offers many great best practice features out of the box. Understanding that functionality and relating it to our processes allowed us to redesign poorly performing operations and optimize others. We found the implementation team to be open-minded and very knowledgeable.”

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product, or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Generix Group North America:

Solutions exist today that can ensure any warehouse or distribution center operates at peak efficiency, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. From Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) and Transportation Management Systems (TMS) to Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) and more, software platforms can deliver a wide range of benefits that ultimately flow to the warehouse operator’s bottom line.

Generix Group North America provides a series of solutions within our Supply Chain Hub product suite to create efficiencies across an entire supply chain. Our solutions are in use around the world and our experience is second-to-none. We invite you to contact us to learn more.

This article originally appeared here. Republished with permission.

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Archives, Global Trade Daily, International Trade

HOW TO GO GLOBAL: WHAT E-COMMERCE SHOPS CAN LEARN FROM THE BEST ENTERPRISES

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Organizations face inherent risks and challenges on the path to globalization, due in part to each country’s regulations, inflation rates, currency and currency exchange rates, language and cultural barriers, foreign politics and policies, and consumer behaviors and preferences.

With almost 200 countries participating in international business, worldwide commerce presents an opportunity for enormous organizational growth if these hurdles can be cleared. Several large enterprises have expanded well internationally (Apple, McDonalds, etc.) by following some key touchpoints.

Surprises at checkout can lead to high cart abandonment.

The last thing an online merchant wants is to have a successful purchase in progress, only for additional fees, unaccepted payment methods, or extra taxes to tempt the consumer to abandon the cart. With online shopping cart abandonment estimated to be around 69.8%, it is the responsibility of the merchants to be aware of foreign regulations and payment challenges that could potentially add costs and corrupt the customer experience.

Equally as important is to be forthcoming about this information. All taxes and fees which may be associated with purchasing internationally should be upfront, and merchants must consistently highlight what the entire cost of the product is going to be, even if this includes additional wording in the checkout. Furthermore, e-commerce merchants need to be clear about the payment methods they accept, as this can vary significantly from country to county.

Merchants need to start paying attention to what consumers want to pay with.

When it comes to localization in e-commerce, customizing payment options is essential. Established enterprises and e-commerce merchants alike should not approach payments with a one-size-fits-all mindset. For example, while Americans prefer to pay with credit and debit cards, Europeans favor bank transfers and digital wallets (such as PayPal), and Asian consumers gravitate to QR codes. Narrowing down the scope even further, demographics within those counties play a role.

Therefore, e-commerce merchants need to tailor their payment methods to what will work for their target consumers.

Data breaches are far too common and are only on the rise.

Recently, international enterprise giants such as Microsoft, Estee Lauder, and MGM Resorts suffered security issues. From accidentally exposing confidential customer data online (such as credit or debit card information, home or office addresses, birth dates, buying history, and more) to malware and hacking incidents, these events significantly harmed consumer trust and brand reputation for these businesses. Even more, cybercrime is a substantial financial liability as the cost of patching, compensating victims, and possible litigation leaves many companies unable to recover fully.

The good news is that there has been much investment from established enterprises to create solutions that cross-border e-commerce merchants entering the market can utilize. For example, innovative technology is allowing faster responses to suspicious activity to ensure that transactions remain secure. As e-commerce merchants now realize that they are at risk if they decide to hold sensitive data in-house, they are discovering new ways to safely store information that is susceptible to threats.

Global merchants must take a lot of things into consideration. 

The established enterprises that have thrived worldwide do so because they understand their target audiences. They know that the key to success overseas is localization starting from a very high level, such as transparency and communication. It then goes down to payment preferences and choices, followed by assuring security and local compliance.

For global e-commerce merchants, this is a roadmap they can follow. For an e-commerce merchant to grow internationally, they need to identify what they want to accomplish, how local they want to be, what resources they have in-house, how to create the best experience and their KPIs.

This is where the right payments infrastructure partner can be of great value. By helping global merchants discover optimal ways of implementing payment methods, defining the best digital experiences based on preferences by the local consumers, and determining conversion metrics, they help merchants connect with more consumers, whether they’re 10 or 10,000 miles away.

Therese Hudak is the Head of Enterprise Account Management at PPRO

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Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, Warehousing

Embracing a New Normal: Why We Should Never Go Back to a Pre-Covid Supply Chain

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For the past decade, global supply chains have been running a seemingly normal path. However, when COVID hit its peak in March 2020, it exposed many of the vulnerabilities that have been affecting these networks. Even a year and a half later, industries across the board are experiencing the impacts of supply chain disruptions. With massive labor shortages and continual shipping delays, there is increasing desperation to return “back to normal.” Instead of quickly returning back to the way things used to be, we should examine the root causes of these issues and create a new model that better aligns with the world we live in today.

Currently, the majority of global supply chains operate on a global warehousing method due to the industry standard of bulk production from a single manufacturer. Typically, bulk orders are routed from one vendor to another distribution center across the globe. While this system can provide some economies of scale, it has also led to wasteful overproduction, increased pollution, inflexible startup costs and major supply chain disruptions.

Industry leaders, brands, and retailers should instead consider incorporating smarter supply chains that uniquely combine technology, data, and manufacturing to automate and optimize the flow of production, procurement, and logistics.

Because consumers can order around the clock, forecasting demand is less predictable, the volume of order sizes lowers, and the number of products offered increases. Coupled with consumer expectations of short delivery times and high customer satisfaction, businesses need to ensure their supply chain requirements can deliver on speed, complexity, and efficiency. A smarter supply chain can meet and even exceed these seemingly impossible expectations.

Smart Supply Chain: On-Demand Manufacturing + Global Production Network

The manufacturing portion of a smart supply chain unites on-demand manufacturing, a process where goods are created only when needed and in the quantities required, with global production, a distributed network that transfers raw materials to production facilities closest to end consumers for final assembly.

On-demand manufacturing and global production are not only more sustainable than traditional manufacturing methods, but they also allow for more flexibility, efficiency, and responsiveness when issues arise such as the current global shortages and delays.

Moving from Global Warehousing to Global Production

Global warehousing, or traditional wholesale manufacturing, relies on storing items until they are ready to be shipped. Many retailers and businesses have historically depended on this method given there were no other reasonable alternatives for decades. Technological advancements have not only paved the way for new more affordable options but have brought to light the many disadvantages of global warehousing including, but not limited to:

-Producing excess inventory

-Inflexible to changing consumer preferences

-Leading to disengaged workforce

-Requiring high start-up cost

The inflexibility and costly nature of global warehousing are two of the major reasons why global supply chains have been struggling to keep up with unprecedented demand.

Use Cases of On-Demand Manufacturing + Global Production

While both on-demand and global production are relatively new processes within the past decade, remnants of each model have been proven across multiple industries.

-The automotive industry embraces a similar just-in-time approach with their parts and assembly. Instead of selling their vehicles at traditional dealerships, Tesla uses stores that are usually found at popular shopping centers. Customers can’t simply drive away with a Tesla either, they can view sample vehicles and then order a customized car online with the help of a sales expert. That level of personalization and detail can only be achieved via an on-demand production model, which Tesla and other European automotive brands successfully utilize.

-Ecommerce businesses that implement a print-on-demand model also only produce items until a customer places an order, eliminating the need for wasteful inventory and costly order minimums. Additionally, this on-demand method helps shrink the supply chain—meaning, the time it takes to produce and ship an item—from 30 and 45 days to between two and three days. Lowering the restock supply chain lead time allows brands to significantly cut down on the initial inventory runs which in turn helps them be more reactive to customer preferences that dictate the winners and the losers within a design, a SKU, a model, or a season.

-Similar to the distributed network in the global production model, Akamai paved the way in the computer network industry by eliminating network hops and putting servers closer to the end-user in order to quickly and more efficiently deliver content. Akamai’s platform has greatly improved Internet latency and exemplifies how a distributed architecture can yield more flexibility and responsiveness. Gooten, a smart supply chain provider, has a parallel approach in the manufacturing space where they utilize a distributed network of global manufacturers to fulfill on-demand orders more efficiently, sustainably, and at a competitive rate. What’s more, Gooten produces 70% of its orders in the U.S. at 23 factories spanning from New Jersey to Oregon.

Embracing a Smarter Supply Chain

With all the benefits that on-demand and global production provide, it’s easy to wonder why more businesses aren’t embracing them. Despite major outlets such as Vogue and Amazon creating buzz around on-demand manufacturing as an answer to many of the supply chain industry’s biggest challenges, it has made headway primarily amongst startups and eCommerce brands. The major impediment for embracing on-demand is primarily due to knowledge gaps and general resistance to change.

Whenever there are revolutionary shifts in any industry, there are always old guards that are comfortable with the existing status quo. One of the more notable examples of this is the film industry shifting from film cinema cameras to digital recording technologies. While the advantages of digital are paramount—from cost savings, ease of use, flexibility, and accessibility—it took over a decade for the industry to fully adopt the method. Hollywood began filming digitally in the 2000s but it wasn’t until 2013 that digitally shot films began the norm amongst the top 100 grossing films.

While they are not mutually exclusive, one can argue that the supply chain disruptions have a far greater impact than the use of digital over film. That’s why it is imperative for companies to embrace the change, even partially, from global warehousing to global production in order to overcome supply chain disruptions and sustain themselves for years to come.

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Mark Kapczynski is the Chief Marketing Officer of Gooten, a globally distributed company that operates a smart supply chain for brands and retailers that are looking to utilize print on-demand manufacturing to transform the way they do business.

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3pls, Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, Warehousing

7 Supply Chain Optimizations to Protect You in 2022

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Current market turmoil is too big for any company to control, but leaders can take some first steps to protect themselves in 2022 with supply chain optimization best practices. Shoring up relationships, improving understanding of current affairs, and adding safeguards all can play a role in securing operations. For companies looking to create a significant impact in short order, here are seven optimization efforts to try.

1. Map the supply chain

Supply chain designs are changing rapidly. Not only can modern technology bring partners together and facilitate near-instant data transfer, but mergers and acquisitions are shifting the landscape of what’s available. To optimize a modern supply chain, you need a good map to see how parts move and where new connections appear.

Consider creating a robust visualization of your supply chain. Show how goods move, where data flows, and what connects each point physically and digitally. You may identify new pathways or constraints, discover unnecessary, duplicative efforts, or uncover advantages such as optimized warehouse locations. But to find these, you need to be able to look.

2. Consolidate data and documents

You need accurate data that’s readily available if you want to respond to a crisis. The more significant the delay in collecting and analyzing this information, the more time it takes to adapt to whatever occurs. So, focus your supply chain optimization on efforts to automate data capture, consolidate it, and make it usable for you and your partners.

One core area to start with is your documentation. Look for tools that support data capture and verification in standard documents, such as invoices, bills of lading, service-level agreements (SLAs), dock receipts, and more. Build a single repository to help you track everything a shipment uses. When possible, work to integrate your tracking and partner systems so that everyone is working from the most recent status and information.

3. Strengthen current relationships

Your supply chain is complex and intricate, involving a wide range of partners. Use the lessons and capabilities from documentation-focused efforts to foster broader communications improvements. Ask suppliers and partners what they need from you, such as updated forecasts or projections. Speak with carrier reps to secure capacity and discuss your seasonal volume. Tell companies how you measure their capabilities or SLA success. Ask partners how they measure you.

The aim is to open lines of communication and start discussing ways to be mutually beneficial in every deal. When you’re a better partner during non-peak, companies are more likely to give you additional support, capacity, and leeway during peak. As we’ve seen in 2020 and 2021, that can make a world of difference.

4. Secure additional space early

Keeping the peak season focus, it’s time to work on your current capacity. Can you or your 3PL store additional goods? Are you running out of shelf space? What will happen when you scale, up or down?

For 2022, it’s a promising idea to start thinking about scaling up your inventory. We’ve seen slower inbound services and prolonged delays at ports. So, increasing stock on hand helps you avoid stockouts and backorders. Work to secure or build that additional space early on to accommodate this increase in stock. It’ll protect order fulfillment as well as give your overall supply chain more lead time.

5. Create realistic alternatives

Communicating with existing partners around their KPIs and your needs, such as storage, will often identify gaps in coverage. You may realize that some partners can’t meet every demand or that they’re at risk when supply chains struggle.

Protect operations with supply chain optimization practices focused on diversity and alternatives. Bring on additional carriers and regional support to keep goods flowing. Try different warehouses or 3PLs for your sales channels to determine the best fit. Adding partners eliminates many single points of failure, allowing you to keep running when the market becomes complex. This protects customers and partners throughout the supply chain by ensuring operations don’t grind to a halt.

6. Enact a testing plan

Today’s supply chain relies on a considerable number of systems and tools to operate efficiently. So, any changes in these can impact your overall supply chain optimization efforts. Work with your partners and internal IT teams to create a plan for testing changes, tracking implementation, and evaluating results. Set metrics and KPIs for tools as well as new partners.

Whether you’re splitting fulfillment across multiple partners, trying new suppliers, or shifting ERPs, you’ll face significant challenges. A robust change management plan will help your teams stay on track, encourage people to try the new methods, and attempt to make investments lucrative. Give people what they need to grow your supply chain.

7.  Continue to analyze and adapt

Supply chain optimization never truly ends. While the other tips can help you take initial steps or push a project further, you’ll want a team to review operations consistently. Assign analyst roles and tasks to ensure you’re continually reviewing the overall supply chain and any improvements you make. Crunch short- and long-term data to see where you’re succeeding or if new risks emerge. Always keep testing and reviewing to help mitigate the impact of supply chain disruptions that have become increasingly common in the 2020s.

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Jake Rheude is the  Vice President of Marketing for Red Stag Fulfillment, an ecommerce fulfillment warehouse that was born out of ecommerce. He has years of experience in ecommerce and business development. In his free time, Jake enjoys reading about business and sharing his own experience with others.

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Archives, Commentary, Global Trade Daily

See Line Item in Action with a Live Webinar or Product Demo

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You already know that CPG e-commerce has taken a leap forward during the pandemic—and that business intelligence has become table stakes for success. This is because knowledge is power, and what you don’t know is hurting you. In such a dynamic market, you must monitor changing demand patterns and analyze the risks of CPG e-commerce without business intelligence. We’ve gone beyond analyses and caution, though, to share how the right business intelligence platform can help you sell more on Amazon and Walmart, the giants that control the retail market. And we’ve shared an overview of the good, better, and best tools for e-commerce e-analytics to show how Line Item helps CPG and e-commerce marketers master their market with insights to drive sales growth.

Now to compliment our industry-specific articles, we’re offering live webinars and product demos so you can see Line Item in action.Why watch a live webinar, or tune into an on-demand session? Simply put, a live product tour brings Line Item’s features to life in specific ways for your category or product portfolio. It’s a way for you and your colleagues to understand the power of business intelligence for your business, not just for CPG and e-commerce in general (though of course, that’s important, too).
Here are four reasons to join us for a live Line Item webinar or product demo.#1: Understand value through product attributes.
Line Item’s deep insight into product attributes is what sets it apart from other analytics platforms. With a single tool built specifically for CPG and e-commerce, marketers can improve performance and profitability by understanding exactly what’s driving value. Line Item’s proprietary AI engine can calculate attributes for every item, even across hundreds of items in a category. These include form (like liquid or powder), size, flavor, and packaging (like pouch, box, and more).With a live product demo, you can see how Line Item enables visibility into this granular detail for business intelligence that powers better decision-making. See when competitors are coming out with new items that could threaten your sales. Detect new attributes that drive value. Know what consumers value about your product and your brand.

#2: Learn how to truly optimize your search results.
Search results matter. They can make or break whether your product makes it into customers’ carts, in-store or online. There can be many reasons why your product isn’t getting its share of page one, but if you don’t know them, you can’t address them with a fix. And it’s not enough to look at them as separate. A smart and successful digital strategy is built and optimized across all selling platforms. You need to know if your e-commerce SEO is working across all sites and all search terms.

In a webinar, you can understand the power of Line Item in optimizing SEO strategy across all keywords, retailer websites, and online marketplaces. Line Item provides insight into how your brands and items are ranking and analyzes page share, rank by item, brand, form, and other attributes. You can also ask questions specific to your brand or category on SEO strategy and how Line Item powers it.

#3: Discover how to drive sales with smarter insights.
How do you know if your promotions are performing? Which search terms are working across all retailers and platforms? Which keywords are worth investing in? This level of detail is where the battle for the digital shelf is won, but it’s impossible to access without deep insight. And it’s not actionable without the kind of visibility into your e-analytics that Line Item enables. This is just one example of how smarter insights can drive sales growth in the fiercely competitive e-commerce market.

Here are some others. Are your out-of-stocks hurting revenue? Are they giving competitors the edge if you don’t maintain inventory on Amazon? Optimizing inventory is enough of a challenge without having to second-guess your strategy. Line Item gives you the insights to understand how inventory is affecting your sales and ultimately your profitability. A webinar or live demo can show you how Line Item can be a game-changer for your e-commerce portfolio.

#4: Level up your ability to monitor third-party activity.
Amazon may be the world’s biggest marketplace, but it’s also the world’s most competitive. Keeping tabs on authorized and unauthorized third-party activity is key to success on the platform, but it can be complex even with the right tools. Unless, that is, you’re using Line Item. In a webinar or live product demo, you can see how a deep dive with Line Item can reveal when an unauthorized third-party seller starts selling your product online. With Line Item, you can understand when your items are priced correctly as well as when competitors or third-party sellers are undercutting your price. From pricing to competitor activity, see how Line Item can help you understand more about your market.

Actions speak louder than words. Join us for an upcoming webinar or request a live product demo to see how Line Item can transform your CPG e-commerce. You’ll understand why Line Item is your best option for mastering your market. It’s a single platform with comprehensive capabilities purpose-built for CPG e-commerce. In today’s competitive and uncertain e-commerce market, Line Item is your lifeline to more profitable e-commerce.

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Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, International Trade

Invest in New Technology to Handle the Surge in Online Fashion Purchases

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Increase in online fashion purchases

To say that e-commerce has experienced a veritable explosion during the Covid-19 pandemic is nothing new. This is not limited to North America, countries all over the world are experiencing huge increases in online markets. According to a 2021 Spain online fashion report, the e-commerce channel has gained 2.7 million customers in Spain and penetration now reaches 43.4% of the resident population.

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Online fashion sales have risen from 9.3% in 2019 to 19.4% in 2020, while 13.6% of consumers have purchased online or plan to do so. This spectacular rise in a business segment, that had already been growing, does not mean that Spain will catch up with other more developed countries. On the contrary, all countries, even those that had advanced the most in e-commerce, have experienced spectacular growth. The case of the UK is a good example because it was already considered an advanced and mature market, nevertheless, it has experienced a boom during the pandemic. According to a recent survey conducted by McKinsey and Dynata, in the UK, fashion e-commerce is expected to represent 50% of the UK market by 2022, compared to the already very high 35% today. In the UK, online market penetration reached 75% in 2020 and is likely to rise to 85% next season.

It is not a narrowing of the gap that separated Spain from other fashion markets, but everything points to the fact that we are facing a real market transformation that affects all countries, regardless of their level before the pandemic. The new buying patterns of consumers, which were already apparent, have become a normalized preference in one year, and in some segments, even dominant.

71% of fashion executives worldwide expect their online business to grow by more than 20% this year. Industry players are therefore facing a decisive moment in which they will need to make important and relatively quick decisions if they want to stay on board a train shows no signs of stopping.

Invest in technology to respond to market demands

The online shopper has become accustomed to standards of excellence and values. Precisely those standards that make logistics management in the fashion sector more complex such as availability of sizes, safety and predictability of delivery, ease of return and omnichannel sales experience with stores. A whole range of requirements that are impossible to manage without the use of appropriate technological tools, both for warehouse management and for transport, integration with systems and logistics management in general.

Many retailers are already investing time and money to improve their digital platforms and develop their online strategies, such as the warehouse management system, or WMS, that even have specific packs to meet the needs of online commerce in which stock management, visibility, traceability, and real-time control are no longer very convenient options but unavoidable requirements.

As omnichannel driven demands become the norm, with resulting customer satisfaction harder to achieve, supply chain professionals need to leverage advanced WMS technology to keep their operations nimble, efficient, and scaling – especially in these volatile times. Given Generix Group’s completeness of vision and ability to execute, as recognized once again by the Gartner analyst community, their Solochain WMS is well-positioned to help companies needing a modern, flexible, and agile solution that can easily adapt to their changing needs. Contact us to learn more.

This article originally appeared here. Republished with permission.

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Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, Warehousing

What Does 2022 have in Store for the Shipping & Logistics Industry?

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The word logistics derived from the French term ‘logistique’ originated around 1830 in the military and is referred to as the movement of supplies and equipment in the war field. 

In layman’s terms, logistics is the overall process of managing how resources such as equipment, inventory, food, liquids, materials and people are acquired, stored and transported to their final destination. 

The logistics industry which was valued at $7,641.2 billion in 2017 plummeted to $5,200 billion in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic was mainly responsible for this massive slowing of logistics activities across the world. 

While some industries struggled badly during the pandemic, many industries such as the daily essential goods industry, e-commerce, healthcare and pharmaceuticals affected the logistics industry positively. With the COVID situation easing gradually and the world getting back on track, the logistics industry is projected to reach $12,975.64 billion by 2027. 

In the year 2022, the logistics industry is predicted a bright outlook and several new trends are expected to dominate the industry. Let us discuss some of the top trends that will determine what is in store for the logistics industry in 2022.


Micro Warehouses and Last Mile Logistics

More micro warehouses are likely to be the trend in 2022. Micro warehouses are dedicated small warehouse spaces focused on moving inventory closer to the customer, especially in densely populated urban areas. It results in faster and efficient last-mile logistics to cater to the increasing demand for same-day and next-day deliveries.

Micro warehouses may not be well suited for products that need to be kept in a climate-controlled environment such as food, beverage and pharmaceutical products. But for common consumer goods and apparel that require minimum special handling, micro warehouses are a great fit.

Increased demand for 3PL and 4PL services

Due to the phenomenal rise of e-commerce, increased demand for 3PL (Third-Party-Logistics) and 4PL (Fourth-Party-Logistics) services are expected.

According to a report by Allied Market Research, the global 3PL market is expected to reach $1.1 trillion over the next six years. 3PL companies that provide warehouses in multiple locations will be more in demand as that would result in efficient last-mile logistics. 

3PL and 4PL offer numerous advantages such as being a cost-effective, faster and responsive model. It does have a few disadvantages too, such as lack of direct control and increased dependency of the manufacturer on the logistics provider. In case of any discrepancy, the blame will be on the company and not the logistics provider. 

But the advantages outweigh the disadvantages and 3PL and 4PL services are expected to be increasingly in demand.

Big Data and IoT

In these times when excessive data can mind-boggle us, Big Data by its sophisticated and predictive analytic methods uses this complex set of information and forecasts the likelihood of possible events. 

Some of the immense benefits of Big Data to the logistics industry are:

-Reducing inefficiencies and helping to make informed decisions

-Predicting things such as, which mode of transportation and carrier to use to maximize profits and meet delivery schedules

-Forecasting demand with more accuracy by understanding customer buying cycles

IoT (Internet of Things) is interconnecting devices and physical objects with embedded sensors, to allow a continuous exchange of data over the internet.

IoT will be increasingly used by the logistics industry to offer innovative solutions to their numerous challenges. Some of the benefits are:

-Increased operational efficiency 

-Enhanced visibility into assets such as the location of vehicles and condition of cargo

-Increased security and real-time notification of missing or stolen assets

-Ability to predict the exact time of delivery leading to enhanced customer satisfaction

While the advantages are plenty, the application of Big Data and IoT in logistics can be intimidating for traditional players, prove costly in its initial deployment and may need additional training of personnel. 

But as the technology will mature, it will gain more traction and such technologies will become commodified. Business owners of all sizes can then easily adopt and reap its benefits.

Automation and Technology

Automation according to the management consulting firm McKinsey, will be among the top agenda for the logistics industry, owing to three factors: increasing demand from online retailers, a growing shortage of labor mainly in the US, and intriguing technological advances. 

Fully automated high-rack warehouses with autonomous vehicles patrolling the aisles would be more commonplace. Managers equipped with AR (Augmented Reality) glasses would ensure full visibility of the entire operations and coordination between robots and humans. 

By 2030 it is estimated that most logistics operations could be automated with AI taking over the repetitive and simple tasks performed by humans earlier.

Specialized Staff

The skillset required by people to work in the logistics industry will change dramatically. 2022, will demand staff well aware of the latest technologies. 

Some of the most sought-after profiles will be of experts in areas such as process automation, big data and AI. Those who could develop intelligent environments with the use of IoT would be highly valued. 

The globalization of the workforce is another trend since the majority of manufacturers will have multi-country operations. Due to the lack of labor in many countries such as the US, outsourcing logistics jobs could be very well a trend.

Green Logistics

Environmentally responsible practices are the need of the hour for all industries including logistics. Green logistics is one such trend that will be increasingly adopted by the industry.

The ways by which logistic companies can adopt green logistics are:

-Eco-friendly warehouses that use timers to gauge and monitor the usage of resources such as electricity, heat, water and gas in their facilities

-Electric and solar-powered vehicles

-Biodegradable packaging

-Using software to calculate the carbon footprint

Blockchain

Blockchain is the much-talked-about method of storing and transferring information in which the record of the transaction is maintained across several computers that are interlinked. 

The logistics industry, by using blockchain can integrate all the components into a single platform. This would enhance visibility as logistics providers, carriers, shipping lines and others in the value chain can use the same platform. Payments and invoicing can also be made from the same system. 

The benefits include: updating customers and companies of the product journey, identifying problems before they occur and unparalleled data protection.

Robotics

Robotics continue to be used increasingly in the logistics industry and is expected to remain among the top trends in the future as well. 

Many companies are increasingly using drones to make deliveries of smaller products. Driverless vehicles are also likely to become more and more common. 

Robotics can improve the productivity of the logistics industry drastically by speeding up monotonous and labor-intensive tasks. It does not intend to replace humans but by delegating repetitive tasks to machines, humans can focus on other higher-value tasks.

Conclusion

The future of the logistics industry looks buoyant, given the phenomenal rise of eCommerce and the increasing trend of online shopping. The aftermath of COVID-19 has also been instrumental to fuel the growth of logistics and international shipping.

The logistics market by end-use is projected to be lucrative for most segments and Healthcare is expected to top the charts.

To remain competitive and efficient, the industry players need to continuously upgrade in terms of processes and technology. The adoption of trends that are expected to dominate the industry in the future, such as the ones we discussed will become necessary for the industry players to sustain and flourish. 

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Tim Robinson is Digital Marketing Manager at PACK & SEND, a 25+ years old and respected brand in ecommerce, logistics, and freight delivery solutions. Tim has 20 years of combined experience in sales and marketing. Logistics, D2C, franchising, business planning, and operations management are his core expertise. Connect with Tim on LinkedIn.