Ecommerce, Carriers and Managing the Great Christmas Parcel Rush
With the Christmas peak now arriving in the parcels market, GFS director Simon Veale says the issue of delivery service quality has now become central to retailers’ businesses. It’s around this time each year that stationers and bookshops begin noticing an increase in sales of diaries and calendars, as people begin to prepare for the New Year to come.
Those bought by individuals working in the parcel and retail industries may well have 12 months like everyone else’s but both sectors focus principally on only two: November and December.
Even though both industries are year-‘round operations, those two months absorb substantial resources and account for a significant chunk of overall revenues.
That has been especially true in the last half decade or so in which e-commerce has become an accepted part of Britain’s shopping habits.
Research released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) earlier this year showed that 60% of British adults were now e-consumers, twice the proportion in the OECD’s other member states, which include the US, Germany, France and Australia.
In addition, you may recall, the GFS Review of 2011 found that the rate of increase in B2C parcel volumes during the peak period meant that they were likely to see parity with B2B traffic by the end of 2016.
What has been interesting is not just the degree to which the ability to shop online effectively wherever and whenever we want has radically altered the behaviour of consumers and the retailers from which they buy.
“Consumers are not only more tech-savvy in how they shop but more demanding in the standards they set retailers”
Those same retailers have begun to acknowledge how e-commerce and the parcel traffic which it generates touch on so many different elements of their own operations. In the past, parcels might have been dealt with by a relatively small number of operations staff.
Nowadays, setting up the technical capability to sell online, despatching items bought on a retail website, answering customer enquiries and tracking despatched items, managing returns and handling claims, and processing the invoices of carrier partners involves so many more departments.
Whilst, on the face of it, they may serve different individual functions, the common e-commerce cause means that they all become inextricably linked. Those retailers which have struggled to grasp that have experienced difficulties. Communications about what might have been sent out, when, where and to whom and how much it cost are broken.
Tech-savvy and demanding
When the pre-Christmas rush starts to generate bigger volumes, the potential for problems increases. Carriers may well provide the relevant information but it doesn’t make its way to consumers who are not only more tech-savvy in how they shop but more demanding in the standards they set the retailers from which they buy.
The singularity – this common thread which joins the various parts of e-commerce firms together – was at the core of GFS launching our Enterprise Carrier Management (ECM) product at the start of October.
I believe that even though the festive period brings massive volumes (more than 4.5 million packages every day during November and December 2011), the key to a headache-free Noël lies in the information as much as the item.
Carriers find out what they have to move, where and when. The various relevant departments of retailers all know their respective roles in fulfilling orders. Consumers know clearly when and how they can obtain their purchases.
Keeping everybody happy all seems rather easy, doesn’t it?
Even so, you’ll forgive my not putting up the decorations and indulging in a seasonal glass of sherry just yet.
With e-commerce parcel traffic expected to increase by 15 per cent on what we saw last year, I suspect I might be a little busy between now and Santa sliding down my chimney on Christmas Eve.
Simon Veale is director at West Sussex-based GFS, which provides a parcel delivery management system offering a single despatch and tracking platform for multiple carriers in the UK. GFS customers ship over 4 million parcels each year.
