If there is one thing the global pandemic made clear, retailers who can fulfill their customers’ desire to shop online and in-person will win – whether that means shipments delivered to their home, in-store, or curbside pickup. In other words, retailers must embrace a true omnichannel fulfillment approach to meet customer needs, make better use of existing inventory and reduce shipping costs. The recent surge in eCommerce has overwhelmed retail supply chains and stretched aging distribution networks to the limit, leaving retailers struggling to increase network speed and boost flexibility while keeping costs down. Add to that online shoppers’ expectations of free two-to-three-day shipping and rapid pivot to shop elsewhere if products are unavailable or delivery times are too long, and it’s no wonder retailers are struggling.
Retailers are being forced to figure out new ways to expand their fulfillment capacity. Adding new warehouses isn’t the answer for many small or mid-sized companies since it requires additional capital and months to get set up, stocked, and ready for operations.
The pandemic has also exposed the problems with the current just-in-time but non-resilient supply chains. How many retailers have wondered if being able to fulfill orders from their existing store inventory, rather than only from their warehouses, could open up more options? How might such a revolutionary option increase their resilience and prevent out-of-stock shortages?
Challenges to Omnichannel Fulfillment
While some retailers use stores to supplement warehouse capacity, scaling this strategy can prove challenging. The reasons include:
To provide faster shipping and more pickup options, retailers have been forced to invest in adding fulfillment locations closer to where customers live. Amazon, Walmart, and Target have been investing in metro fulfillment hubs packed with automation. This strategy only works for larger retailers with much demand and who can invest at scale.
But what about the smaller retailers? The ones that cannot justify more investment in omnichannel fulfillment locations or putting more inventory closer to customers?
A new type of fulfillment option may be the answer – one focused on driving a better customer experience and more conversions while improving inventory utilization. An option that has the potential to alleviate fulfillment capacity constraints and reduce the number of miles traveled along with the overall cost of delivery. It’s called market-driven fulfillment.
Market-driven fulfillment is a new approach to omnichannel fulfillment that connects a retailer's stores within a metro market to create a much more nimble and flexible fulfillment capacity than possible through eCommerce alone.
Using a retailer’s existing fulfillment network, market-driven fulfillment pools inventory from multiple stores, consolidating shipping into fewer packages and making any product available for pickup anywhere in that market.
Nextuple is pioneering this new approach with a software platform and logistics services that help solve retailers' supply chain and omnichannel fulfillment challenges to support customer-centric eCommerce solutions.
The solution combines:
Nextuple’s SaaS-based technology platform creates a virtual inventory pool and can move inventory based on consumer demand by connecting a retailers’ network of local stores.
What Market-Driven Fulfillment Delivers
Using a market-driven fulfillment approach from Nextuple, retailers can easily:
Nextuple helps mid-market retailers reduce costs and increase efficiencies by making store-centric fulfillment a reality enabling them to compete with larger retailers such as Amazon.
Find Out More
Efficient fulfillment means fewer packages and miles traveled to get to a customer. At Nextuple, we’re on a mission to unleash the power of fulfillment networks to create a more sustainable future. Start your journey here if you’d like to learn more about market-driven fulfillment or how it can work for you.
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