How Businesses can Scale On-time Deliveries and Optimize Logistics Costs for Festive Season

The year’s final quarter is one of the busiest times for businesses. To put things in perspective, eCommerce festive season sales that commenced during the final week of September this year saw a 28% increase in just the first two days compared to last year, with over 7 million orders processed during that time. Most (75%) of these orders were from tier-II and tier-III cities.

Meeting such colossal order volumes can be challenging, especially since customers today expect two-day, next-day, and same-day deliveries with little to no additional shipping costs. To manage this, eCommerce players need a highly efficient, transparent, and responsive fleet and 3PL network that caters to growing order volumes and ensures cost-efficient and on-time deliveries. Let’s see how businesses can achieve this.

Ensure seamless delivery orchestration
Using their own riders and 3PLs, eCommerce brands and retailers find themselves spending significantly higher while executing deliveries. It is because either of the resources can be under or overutilized. There have been instances where deliveries are outsourced as full-time riders stay idle.

To boost operational efficiency, businesses can prioritize deliveries between their own fleet and logistics partners’. An intelligent allocation engine allocates deliveries based on payment type, SKU type, invoice value, weight, order volume, vehicle type, and other factors. Businesses can plan trips days in advance using capacity-based allocation. Retailers can improve logistical planning by gaining visibility into their own fleet’s future capacity based on customer SLAs. Furthermore, vehicle capacity optimization enhances capacity utilization by 31%.

Smart logistics management platforms powered by AI and automation enable businesses to manage, track and monitor multiple 3PLs under a single dashboard. Businesses can ensure end-to-end visibility over parcel movement and better benchmark delivery KPIs.

Enabling faster and cost-efficient deliveries
Smart auto allocation rules consider various parameters such as cost, serviceability, network, first-attempt delivery rate, etc., to automatically assign the delivery task to execute same-day, next-day, or other order fulfillment windows. This reduces guesswork, expedites decision-making, lowers order-to-ship time by 12%, and increases on-time dispatch by 28%. The solution works similarly to assign deliveries to the rider after taking into account order weight, dimension, vehicle type, rider’s current workload, proximity to the customer, etc., and other parameters.

Additionally, an intelligent route planning and optimization engine charts out the most efficient routes across multiple touchpoints to increase on-time deliveries by 24% and make deliveries economical.

Boost first-attempt delivery rate
Approximately 8% of first-time domestic deliveries fail, costing retailers up to $17.20 per order. Each redelivery incurs additional costs.

Businesses can tackle this efficiently with smart logistics management solutions. The system sends notifications to customers allowing them to track their orders in real-time, and informs them of the delivery ETAs. It increases the chances of customer availability at the delivery time, thus boosting the first-attempt success rate and lowering shipment returns by 18%. Customers can also request to change their delivery time slot at their convenience, increasing customer experience by 64% and lowering reattempt costs.

Automate returns pickup
Efficiently handling returns during peak season can be a headache. Nearly 1/5th of the festive orders get canceled or returned before they make it to the customers. Arresting mock GPS locations to mark delivery statuses falsely is also critical to reducing returns and customer dissatisfaction.

Cutting-edge logistics technologies smartly combine deliveries and pickups. They reduce the distance traveled by 5%, lower trip volume by 6%, prevent vehicle idling, and eliminate empty miles. It results in a 12% and 23% reduction in mid-mile and last-mile costs to mitigate the additional cost burden of returns.

Moreover, intelligent courier aggregation dashboards display and track predefined delivery KPIs and improve reporting. The retailer can verify non-delivery attempts with customers, especially when the system-suggested route and driver location do not sync.

Innovative logistics management solutions can empower businesses to tame logistics inefficiencies and carve exceptional delivery experiences to gain a competitive edge and make the most out of the festive season sales.

SHIPSY MEDIA CONTACT

arjun.alva@shipsy.io