Nearly three billion packages were delivered in 2016 according to recent figures released by research form Mintel, with UK spending on delivery services and express delivery exceeding £10.1bn, an increase of £1 billion year on year.Although there is an increasing number of deliveries year on year, the current retail logistics system is one based on a traditional approach, and this lengthy approach offers a one-size fits all logistics service based on an asset-heavy model that makes it unable to adapt to precision or customer convenience. Even same day delivery services are subject to issues that can cause delays due to a complicated product journey between the warehouse and the customer.
Every tradition becomes outdated
Picture the urban consumer ordering a product for next day delivery from their local retailer (either in-store or online). While that store located within a couple of miles from the customer’s home serves at the point of sale, the product itself will be shipped to the customer from a warehouse or fulfilment centre located in another part of the city or country. The customer must wait while the order is processed, picked from the store, transported to the warehouse and put into transit with a delivery service, along with numerous other items being despatched to other customers. For retailers, the continued dependence on traditional delivery services will ultimately damage their ability to meet the growing demand for customer convenience, speed and ease.
This process could, and should, be drastically improved. Delivery options can’t only be made faster and more streamlined, but more precise, enabling consumers to pick a specific time and date and enabling the retailers to guarantee not only same day and next day delivery, but within a one-hour timeslot of the customer’s choice.
And as consumers become increasingly picky with which retailer they choose to shop with, retailers must reconsider their last mile delivery options, to meet their customer’s demanding needs. Innovative tech-enabled delivery solutions do now exist on the market, allowing retailers to reimage their stores into local warehouses, and as a result, offer more convenient, transparent and precise delivery options to their customers.
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Brisqq allows retailers to meet today’s demands
Though disrupting the industry in such a way may seem a demanding task, it is in fact easy to achieve with the right solution in place, and it is a move that will place retailers in much higher regard amongst their customers. This can be easily achieved through Brisqq’s unique technology that connects retailers (with urban bricks-and-mortar stores) with a pool of always-available crowdsourced couriers. Using an intuitive cloud-based dashboard, retailers are seamlessly able to offer their customers a precise delivery option same-day or any future date, in a one-hour timeslot of their choice. that quickly enables the arrangement of precision delivery.
An intelligent algorithm sources the most suitable available courier from a freelance resource pool based on a series of factors including their rating, vehicle type, and location. Not only does this eliminate the risk of missed deliveries, ensuring that the product arrives within the hour specified by the customer, it also works as a sales conversion tool, encouraging customers to make quicker purchasing decisions based on the knowledge that they will receive their delivery at a time convenient to them, whether it is later that day or at a specified date in the future.
While the traditional method is indeed delivering on consumer requirements, it does not meet consumer expectations and it would take a lot of time, expense and upheaval to transform the way in which traditional delivery services operate in order to successfully meet those expectations. Retailers, on the other hand, can adapt quickly and easily with a tech-enabled logistics solution that is built to deliver upon those consumer expectations and is already proving to satisfy those demands.
