OneRail releases its Retail Report: Carrier Diversification Tops 2024 Shipping Fulfillment Goals. The report highlights new findings from a survey of more than 350 managers and executives within the retail and e-Commerce landscape. It provides critical insights for omnichannel fulfillment strategy to improve the customer experience while increasing revenue and reducing costs.
OneRail’s report shows that retailers are looking to diversify their delivery networks in order to reduce risk and keep their delivery promise. In fact, 73% of survey respondents said relying on their internal fleets makes it much more difficult to meet demand spikes. The report also highlights that 96% of survey respondents report that their customers consider delivery an essential part of their shopping experience, and that 20% of customer complaints retailers receive pertain to long delivery times and delays.
"Today, customers crave personalized service and convenience, combined with more product variety and flexible shipping options,” says OneRail Founder and CEO Bill Catania. “Retailers and product distributors have now realized that final mile delivery is the weakest link in the chain, impacting their customer experience, and so they are investing in technology solutions to mitigate risk, differentiate themselves, while expanding margin to remain viable in the market.”
Key Takeaways:
- With 69% percent of retail fulfillment leaders say that using only one delivery partner represents an intolerable risk to their business, and 65% of respondents planning to offer same-day or next-day delivery in the next one to two years, it is evident that investment in diversified delivery networks is where the industry is headed.
- More than a third of respondents said their delivery network doesn’t match their product catalog in real time, and 67% reported that their limited delivery network caused limited sales. The costs of an inadequate delivery network reach beyond lost sales and damaged customer relationships, as the survey details.
- The report overall highlights the need for retailers to focus on investing in diversifying their delivery networks, automation, technologies and processes that drive efficiencies, in order to meet customer demand in 2024, and beyond. Companies will need to transform static data inputs trapped in data silos into dynamic real-time optimization and decisioning; notably a real-time decision engine that triangulates inventory level and location, a variety of carrier and mode options optimized to meet a wide spectrum of load size, delivery speed and specialty capabilities, and customer preferences.
