Grocery retail strategies fail if they are not backed by the right supply chains; 2.Harness the power of AI to optimize your grocery supply chain; 3.Food retailing is a difficult and turbulent market. Grocery shopping has never been easy, but today’s business transformation is more drastic than anything we’ve seen in decades, especially with COVID-19 accelerating even more of the trends that are shaping the market. Consider the example in Figure 12 below, which shows the impact on sales when store staff created a table display in addition to the usual shelf space for a product. Although no one recorded this change in the master data, the system was able to easily track the impact on demand as a factor of how the product was displayed in the store.
In the case of so-called ultra-fresh products, that is, products with a short shelf life that must be sold that same day, 100% availability on the shelves means that there will always be waste or discounts, unless the forecast is always impeccable as to the day, the store and the product. This means that very detailed control is needed to find the optimal balance between the risk of running out of stock and the risk of waste. Other fresh produce faces a similar challenge, just a little less pronounced. Table 1 presents some examples of situations in which the value of basing forecasts in distribution centers on projected orders in stores is especially notable.
Retail is in crisis and it is not clear what the impact of different sales and delivery channels, store formats or even retail players will be. In 10 or 15 years, we will probably remember this time with amazement and ask ourselves, “How did we not see this coming?. Take advantage of local inventory to reduce delivery costs. Use data and data analysis to understand where and when each delivery option and its connected systems (inventory, warehouse, transportation management systems) will be most cost-effective.
Then configure your on-demand delivery flows and resources (inventory, drivers, fleets, and other equipment) and systems accordingly to offer better shipping prices (or no price) in competitive terms. That way, you can understand how best to use your existing delivery resources and services to fulfill on-demand deliveries. This is because fresh produce requires frequent deliveries and because overall inventory flows are important enough to ensure daily deliveries. For example, one of my team members recently ordered groceries online from a major grocery store in the hope of taking advantage of their convenient home delivery service.
For example, route optimization, by sending delivery people on the shortest and least expensive routes, not only ensures that you spend the least possible amount on gas, but it also reduces vehicle maintenance and increases your delivery capacity. To plan delivery routes and schedule drivers through OptimoRoute, you just have to take the Excel spreadsheet or other document that lists your next orders along with the delivery addresses and upload it. Having high-level data on the available delivery fleets, as well as a detailed analysis of each individual driver, is what allows companies to save time on deliveries and streamline operations. Once the parameters have been set, OptimoRoute automatically takes into account driver restrictions, the delivery time slots of orders, the limits of the delivery territory and the capacity of each individual vehicle.
After entering the parameters, the software must take into account the delivery time slots of the orders, the restrictions on drivers, the delivery areas and the capacity of each vehicle, in order to ensure that you make the most of your capacity without running the risk of delayed deliveries to customers. Since more than 27% of shoppers abandon carts when delivery options aren’t fast enough, automating the logistics of same-day or on-demand deliveries is critical to capturing market share. Some companies may need to reorganize many of their delivery services and processes and make challenging adaptations to their resources, including warehouse and store operations, dispatching, driver management, and customer service technologies, in order to provide consumers with fast and convenient delivery and on-demand delivery. Fortunately, there are delivery management tools that can be used to simplify the optimization of grocery delivery logistics.
In today’s on-demand delivery market, companies must evaluate what “must-have” features are missing in their delivery services to reduce delivery costs and provide better customer experiences. So, if you want to successfully and efficiently deliver food, logistics is what you need to optimize. The exponential growth in demand for food delivery was catapulted by COVID-19, but consumers like Katrina Caringi say they will continue to use grocery delivery even after social distancing restrictions have been lifted, and they say that convenience is an important incentive. So who is to blame for this delivery mishap? Is it the person who physically packed the items, the third-party delivery service, or the grocery store? The answer is that you can’t specify an area.
If you want your grocery deliveries to be successful and efficient, you need to optimize your logistics.