This commentary appeared in the print edition of the Jan. 6, 2020, Journal of Commerce Annual Review and Outlook.
Third-party logistics providers must continue to rise to the challenge of customer demand for faster, simpler, frictionless service, whether shipping to a consumer or to a manufacturing line. Expectations have evolved from two-day to next-day to ordering a product on Amazon at 10 am today and receiving it by 5 pm — or sooner — the same day.
The other sea change has been the explosion of sales and fulfillment channels. Once upon a time, a business sold goods principally from its own website or from a retail store. Today those same products are available not only through the Amazons and eBays of the world, but also dozens of new, multi-party e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Ware2Go, BigCommerce, Magento, 3dcart, and Zoey.
That means 3PLs have to achieve two objectives: become more agile, adaptable, flexible, and faster than ever before in designing and deploying service solutions and invest smartly in advanced IT capabilities. These must support traditional warehouse and inventory management needs, while also providing rapid-response fulfillment and “plug-and-play” ability to connect with and instantly process orders from multiple e-commerce platforms — and provide visibility to that order all along the way.
RK has positioned itself as a logistics supplier of choice for e-commerce businesses by partnering with e-commerce platform provider Deposco for order fulfillment and platform connectivity, while retraining our workforce to utilize these new tools to the fullest for customers like SoundBoks, Miele, and others, as well as by embracing an expanding menu of transportation options to meet customers’ need for reliability.
We’re in a very fast-changing and evolving market. Consumers — and businesses — want it now and won’t settle for less. But at the end of the day, no matter how the order is placed or what transportation resource is used, the key to a satisfied, sustainable customer is an on-time and exception-free delivery.