Order Fulfillment

Retailers are constantly looking to make efficiency gains to boost their overall performance. In fact, 67 percent of retailers state overall business operations efficiency to be of critical importance. Operational efficiencies enable retailers to cut costs, reduce risks and increase outputs, resulting in overall business growth. However, many retailers still struggle to serve customer demands…

Retail, like healthcare, education, and so many other aspects of daily life, have been changing fast as various technologies develop and mature. Efficiency in batteries and motors are exponentially ahead of where they were 10 years ago, as is connectivity in the form of Wi-Fi and 5/6G. Tremendous compute power now sits in the cloud…

The retail industry is a highly competitive, challenging and constantly evolving environment. Customer shopping behaviors are increasingly hard to predict, and retailers must constantly innovate or risk becoming redundant. The COVID-19 pandemic, which has heavily impacted the retail industry, is a prime example of this. Driven by technological advances, social and economic shifts, and a…

In this bonus episode of Total Retail Talks, Digital Content Director Kristina Stidham interviews Editor-in-Chief Joe Keenan about Total Retail's recently published report, Automated Order Replenishment Drives High-Level BOPIS Execution .... and Customer Satisfaction, produced in conjunction with SPS Commerce. Listen in as Keenan shares a few key highlights from the report and how retailers can use automation…

Amazon.com's encroachment into grocery has been rapidly increasing in recent months and presents another array of challenges to traditional grocers that have fought to survive in last year’s digital world. At the end of April, Amazon announced the expansion of its in-garage grocery delivery service to all markets where it currently offers grocery delivery. This…

2020 reshaped the current retail paradigm. And while brands are banking on some aspects of the shopping experience returning to “normal” post-pandemic, other changes brought about over the last year will be permanent. Chief among these is increased flexibility around order fulfillment, which necessitates much more refined customer communications. Options such as curbside pickup; buy…

To address the challenge of balancing inventory and gaining visibility into it, requirements for effective and efficient buy online, pickup in-store (BOPIS) and curbside pickup programs, retailers are increasingly turning to automated technology solutions. They’re automating order and delivery flows with their product suppliers through the use of EDI (i.e., the electronic interchange of business…

As more luxury brands sell direct to consumers online, they're constantly seeking ways to differentiate the experience and protect their most valuable asset: their brand. While a luxury brand may intuitively seem valuable, companies have long known there's real, measurable value in that brand. In fact, in the increasingly “digital first” world of commerce, the…

It’s crunch time for retailers. A recent UBS report predicts that 80,000 retail stores will close over the next five years as the huge upswing in online shopping due to the pandemic becomes a more permanent consumer buying pattern. UBS also expects the e-commerce share of total retail sales to grow from 18 percent in…

The use of automation technology to facilitate the seamless flow of information between product suppliers and retailers is critical to meeting consumers’ omnichannel fulfillment demands. Automation is necessary for retailers to not only satisfy their customers’ lofty expectations for buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) and curbside pickup, but also to keep pace with their…