06/02/2019
Most relevant fulfilment trends for 2019 – according to SNAP
eCommerce fulfilment is one of the cornerstones of all online commerce operations and one of the key factors to determine customer satisfaction. SNAP Fulfil is one of the leaders in the industry, and they came up with the list of key trends in this sector of business for 2019. These include:
• Subscription commerce
• Creative delivery
• Big data
• Robots and AI
Subscription commerce
Subscription commerce has shown a strong trend of growth in 2018, and subscription-based procurement of goods is expected to double in value in the following year for one-third of the retailers operating in this way. However, there are certain challenges that the aforementioned retailers will face with the increase of trade and it is necessary that they pay due attention to these issues.
Creative delivery
Amazon as the key player on the global market has moved expectations of an average customer when it comes to delivery options. Nowadays, any retailer that wishes to be successful needs to match the options that Amazon provides in order to retain their customers. One of the ways to do so is to go creative and try to increase delivery speeds while keeping the costs at the minimum. One of the ways that become increasingly popular is “buy online – pick up in store” approach. The omnichannel trade that combines both online and physical stores is expected to become even more important in the future thanks to this.
Big data
Warehouses became huge and contain millions of items. In order to be able to fulfil quickly and efficiently, the retailers need to understand how to implement WMS software that will provide them with the speed and flexibility to process the orders quickly enough. Understanding and manipulating big data, therefore, becomes one of the most important tasks in any eCommerce operation.
Robots and AI
The further way to improve fulfilment tasks is automatization and robotisation of certain tasks within the warehouses. It is projected that the increase in this sector will be some 12% in the period between the years 2016 and 2023. The largest obstacle here is the fact that the actual warehouse workers have shown certain restrain towards these technologies as they feared that the robots will replace them. With a better understanding of the new technologies, they start to realise that the robots and the AI in warehouse management are there not to take their jobs but to make their work easier.