As retailers more seamlessly meld ecommerce and in-store channels, many discover the fulfillment portion of their strategy still needs improvement. How can digitally native brands as well as established bricks-and-mortar sellers delight customers with quick and accurate transportation options without losing control of costs?
During his career as an analyst covering the retail sector for Bloomberg, Chen Grazutis talked with everyone from Walmart to Target to Nike about their fulfillment challenges in an age of shifting consumer behavior. He learned that shoppers frequently list price and convenience as top reasons for buying online, but another theme is also common. “You order something and get it in two days,” Grazutis says. “It’s accurate and it’s there, and there’s full transparency into the process.” Not only do consumers like to shop when and where it suits them, online buyers have become accustomed to knowing where their orders are at every step along the way.
Bringoz intends to deliver that kind of transparent fulfillment support across multiple channels. The end-to-end logistics system provides customers with their order status information regardless of where the transaction occurred, and it enables retailers to better manage the shopping journey after the buy button has been clicked.
“Remember that the customer journey doesn’t end with the actual purchase online,” says Grazutis, co-founder and general manager of North America for Bringoz. “What happens after that still needs to be addressed.”
Any number of software platforms are available to manage small portions of the fulfillment process. “Bringoz puts all the pieces together,” Grazutis says. “We're able to put multiple stakeholders on the same page, including the retailer, drivers, dispatchers, customers and third parties.” Because everyone is in a single system, retailers can better optimize fulfillment activities, control costs and gain more visibility into the entire process.
Brands are increasingly managing demand from a multitude of channels — their own website, a mobile app, third-party marketplaces and in-store purchases. Delivery is also becoming more complex, with retailers relying on third-party transportation providers, in-house drivers and even crowdsourced local delivery teams. “There’s no right mix of resources,” Grazutis says. “It depends on the retailer.”
Once an order is placed, most shoppers have only one question: “When will I get my stuff?” For retailers able to provide their customers with an answer, the delivery function becomes an opportunity to enhance the shopping experience and build loyalty. Bringoz matches demand with the supply of transportation. Routing optimization and dispatching are also core functions, but the capabilities extend out even further. “We can do the risk management, telling the retailer what’s on time and what will be late,” Grazutis says. “It’s all the internal planning, but it also provides that complete customer-facing capability.”
One access point to the entire operation brings added benefits as new challenges crop up within the fulfillment process. Retailers with multiple locations in different cities and states, for example, face a web of compliance and other issues that vary from one locale to another. “You have different operations, different drivers and different costs,” Grazutis says. “You might also have different regulatory environments for things like alcohol.” Instead of managing locations individually, Bringoz helps brands save time and costs by coordinating activities across multiple stores and centralizing their delivery and distribution management.
Customization and scalability are also areas where retailers can improve the logistics process. Today’s delivery management systems need to be evaluated with an eye toward each brand’s future growth strategy. “Our system is designed to support starting with a small implementation, and then you can grow over time as you grow your delivery business,” Grazutis says. “Bringoz can address all those same challenges at an enterprise level.”