The e-commerce landscape is rapidly changing. Consumers today order their smallest groceries online and prefer not to pay shipping costs for them. Meanwhile, e-tail giants such as wehkamp, bol.com and Amazon are conquering even more market share by responding well to the wishes of online shoppers. In order to keep up with these developments, companies need to put their best foot forward, especially in the field of fulfilment. During Logistica in the LogistiekProfs theatre, Docdata showed which principles companies need to adhere to in order to get their fulfilment right in these times.
Modularity
"We use a number of principles throughout the process," said Jorg Megens, Business Innovator at Docdata, during his talk. "The most important is modularity. In e-commerce, there is often a huge range of products, from eye pencils to washing machines. It is enormously difficult to stick that into one process." Docdata therefore chooses to divide different products into different processes, e.g. fragile and large products. The advantage of this is clarity. Sub-processes can easily be optimised and extended.
One example is the same-day delivery that Docdata offers with bol.com. Customers ordering from bol.com can collect their parcel from an Albert Heijn store of their choice on the same day. "This involves such a different process from all other orders, that we process same day delivery completely separately from all other bol.com orders. There is also a separate carrier that brings these orders to the shops. The reason for this is modularity," Megens said.
Flexibility
Another important principle of Docdata is flexibility. The difference between off-peak periods and peak periods is growing. "If we set up machines for these peak periods, these machines would only run between Sinterklaas and Christmas and otherwise be idle." Docdata has therefore chosen to fill the peak periods with manpower. "We purchase a number of machines based on the eight-month base sales. We supplement the peaks with people. That way we remain flexible."
European reverse logistics
Docdata has to process a lot of returns. Here, too, it sticks to an important principle: local return addresses. If a webshop sells from the Netherlands to a consumer in another European country, it is important that they can send the parcel to a local return address. "Customers don't want to send a parcel to Poland or Germany and they certainly don't want to pay money for that," Megens explains.
Did you miss this lecture? Jorg Megens will give another lecture at the LogistiekProfs theatre on Friday 13 November. Besides the principles mentioned above, Megens will also discuss trends in e-commerce, the different business models and the main sales channels. You can register for this session here!
