New opportunities are emerging for all parties — for the client, products are created that allow combining delivery services within a specific interval, receiving different types of goods with variability in payment, delivery methods, receiving notifications about delivery and arrival of the courier, and for online stores, customers of the service — differentiation of methods for preparing and moving cargo, from turnkey fulfillment to direct delivery of individual orders from the seller to the buyer.
Among the many possibilities for the development of technologies, CDEK identifies several key trends.
1. Resources
The delivery service market is influenced by seasonality, which requires flexibility in personnel management. Accordingly, standard methods of recruitment and outsourcing are not effective enough during short seasonal peaks or individual overloaded time slots of the working day. Servicing additional order volumes can be implemented through a crowd platform, allowing a portion of simple operations to be outsourced to third-party crowd workers who do not require permanent employment, but are effective in maintaining delivery times for customers, and these can be both crowd couriers and warehouse employees.
2. Communications
The standard practice of voice contact with the client has long gone into the past, but replacing it with a single updated tool, a chatbot or messenger, does not provide sufficient effect. Applying a cascading principle of communication, the sequential use of all options from a robo-call to connecting an operator, the development of artificial intelligence will ensure contact with all types of audiences, inform about the arrival of cargo at the point of issue of orders or the arrival of the courier.
3. Automation of processing
The growing volume of cargo and processing costs require modernization of warehouses, so the installation of sorting lines and robotization of various types are a prerequisite for reducing the time between receiving, processing cargo and subsequent dispatch of the courier for delivery.
4. Flexibility and support for various products
Most partners of logistics companies have different groups of orders that require variability in service, so it is important for logistics operators to support both orders of the "Fast delivery" type, with the need to comply with short service intervals, using hyperlocal delivery in small macro zones around order pick-up points, with the involvement of pedestrian couriers, bicycle couriers, as well as oversized orders for LTL tasks, marketplaces, furniture, with the involvement of heavy-duty transport, the availability of loading and unloading operations, etc.
5. Artificial intelligence, "smart logistics"
Managing significant volumes of cargo flows and resources requires minimizing risks in the decision-making process for building transport schemes, warehouse processes and last-mile delivery, so the future of the industry lies in the ability to calculate trends, model development, manage many linear operations using artificial intelligence. Accordingly, large last-mile operators are transforming into logistics IT companies, which allows them to effectively support all of the above development blocks, find new ways and methods of organizing production.
The development of e-commerce in recent years, the explosive growth in last-mile services, require logistics companies to constantly search for new solutions that contribute to improving service for end recipients.
To optimize delivery speed and develop the Last Mile project, CDEK has introduced a number of solutions: automation of order processing, the use of crowd couriers in seasons with high demand for delivery, variability in methods of receiving parcels, increasing the speed of sending/issuing orders using CDEK ID and others.
The near future will support the trend towards development, and the last mile will continue to define the face of companies for customers.
Alexander Voronov,
Head of Intra-City Logistics at CDEK