Retail has undergone a sea-change over the last half-a-decade, than what it has witnessed or progressed in half-a-century. The pace at which the innovations and changes have tread, especially during the pandemic, the retail segment has adapted to changes in consumption, consumer behaviour, channel integrations, and accelerated customer expectations around speed and convenience. In fact, the race to shorten click-to-customer cycle time is arguably the single greatest influence on the shape of future omni-channel supply chains. Needless to say, the bar continues to rise for retail and direct-to-consumer brands.
The challenges of accelerated delivery entails speed, freebies, delivery benefits, supply chain operations, inventory management, complex SKU control, demand forecasting, and governing execution.
A one-size-fits-all approach does not address complex issues like these, especially in today's time. Despite the many challenges of providing ever-faster omni-channel order fulfillment, there are primarily a few key characteristics that define fast and efficient fulfillment models --
a) segmented approach in shaping the delivery-speed promise
b) selective yet judicious network expansion
c) refined inventory analytics, automation and/or robotics
d) mitigated last-mile connectivity by balancing platform services and regional carriers
