When retail and logistics converge

2020 can be said to be a year that the retail market has changed significantly. Due to the impact of the covid-19 pandemic, customers behavior changed dramatically and this has awakened many businesses, helping them realize how close the relationship of retail and logistics.

This change has inadvertently been driving the transition in the way retail businesses operate – which in the past they have not really taken the right attention on the preparation and adaptation. Whether large or small, if the business is not in harmony with this flow, getting out of the game is incredibly understandable-like a series of businesses that are forced to close post-Covid.

Obviously, the delivery management, logistics has a direct impact on sales performance and customer experience. In contrast, the effectiveness of retail also affects logistics activities. It is a two-way relationship with each other, when one side does well, it will bring efficiency to the other and vice versa.

What made the link between retail and logistics?

In recent years, online sales are constantly increasing. According to statistics from previous years, online sales accounted for 10% of total sales. By 2020, with the effects of covid 19, this number will surely increase many more times. In many countries around the world, especially in areas where blockade by covid 19, consumers have completely shifted from direct shopping to online shopping. This is not only a short-term method but very likely in the future, online shopping will become a trend and habit of shoppers.

In the face of this situation, retailers are increasingly aware of the need to develop new business models to provide opportunities for driving sales both online and offline. The key to this success is empowering the mobile business, which provides instant, instant delivery to customers, which opens the door to a combination of retail and logistics.

The impact of logistics on retail activities

The relationship between retail and logistics is reflected in the following 3 aspects;

First: Speed ​​of delivery

Anyone when buying, who wants to receive the item quickly. In particular, with the essential goods, customers are willing to pay an extra cost to receive goods sooner. So, when the supply chain meets the criteria of speed, it will certainly enhance customer experience

Second: Product images

Confusions about goods or incidents of defective goods, careless packaging will be a big minus point for businesses. So make sure that your business has delivered the right product to customers with the most beautiful packaging. To do this, the supply chain must arrange and control goods closely, to avoid unnecessary errors.

Third: Delivery force

Surely when meeting a friendly delivery, professional manner, customers will feel more satisfied with the business. In online delivery, the shipper acts as the representative of the business, like the image of salespeople in traditional sales channels.

How to converge retail and logistics with high efficiency?

Although recognizing the importance of retail and logistics, how to make the combination work best

Expand customer interaction platform

Enterprises need to identify clearly that online pages are now becoming potential channels. So first of all businesses need to expand online channels, of course not every item is suitable for online commerce, but we can see clearly, all the online channels are currently bringing to brand equity values.

In parallel with the expansion of online channels, businesses should focus on developing human resources for direct delivery to customers, and do not forget to train their professional skills and skills.

A more reasonable way that many businesses are now applying is to coordinate with third parties to provide forwarding services.

Building a synchronous management system

Building a comprehensive information management system will help businesses solve a lot of difficulties and save costs. Comprehensive information system can be considered as an ecosystem that includes all the information from the process of receiving goods into the warehouse until delivering goods according to customer needs. When building a uniform and unified process, businesses will no longer have difficulty in controlling the links in the link between retail and logistics.

Of course, manual control tools can not solve this problem for businesses, the best solution today is to apply warehouse management and supply chain management technologies.