How eCommerce fits into the omnichannel is still an unfolding story. While global eCommerce sales continue to expand at more than twice the rate of total retail growth, it still only represents an average 8.5% of all annual retail trade. By 2025, however, one of every four dollars spent in retail will be through an online store. The bottom line is your eCommerce website will be a more significant part of your omnichannel business as time goes on. Thus, your ability to handle timely eCommerce fulfillment is becoming more and more critical.

Logical Partnerships Emerge for eCommerce Fulfillment

The importance of your online store is not lost to your eCommerce provider. Nor to any big shipping company, for that matter. With Amazon fulfillment setting the bar for fast home delivery, logistics providers are rushing to help businesses fulfill their eCommerce website orders. They’re also teaming up with platforms to provide faster eCommerce fulfillment in more markets.

For example, Shopify recently added DHL express as an international carrier option. This gives more Shopify customers lower shipping rates previously available only to customers with enterprise accounts. In a similar vein, FedEx this year debuted FedEx Fulfillment. This service combines warehousing, packing, and shipping for brands with eCommerce channels.

Use 3PLs to Get Inventory Anywhere

Your customers can be anywhere. But thanks to third-party logistics, you don’t need to invest in an Amazon-like infrastructure to get your products closer to them. Using 3PLs, you can hold the stock you need for eCommerce fulfillment practically anywhere in the world.

Automate eCommerce Fulfillment

While physical retailers sell on websites, pure-play eCommerce brands are opening physical stores. Meanwhile, both use marketplaces to reach more customers. This move to the omnichannel is the model of the future. However, the more channels you use, the more you have to do to manage order fulfillment. This increases the amount of time and resources you need to simply process and fulfill orders. Use technology to automate your business processes to help keep costs down as your business grows.

Integrate eCommerce to Your Other Channels

Speaking of costs, the amount of stock you carry can impact your bottom line. Without understanding how well your products sell through any given channel, business risks carrying too much or too little of something. This means increased carrying costs in the former case, and lost sales in the latter. The risk to your bottom line increases as you sell more and add more channels and markets. Manage stock, processes, and fulfillment through a single tool that gives you realtime visibility, accurate costs and in-depth reports for the most efficient supply chain possible.

How eCommerce fits into the omnichannel is still an unfolding story. While global eCommerce sales continue to expand at more than twice the rate of total retail growth, it still only represents an average 8.5% of all annual retail trade. By 2025, however, one of every four dollars spent in retail will be through an online store. The bottom line is your eCommerce website will be a more significant part of your omnichannel business as time goes on. Thus, your ability to handle timely eCommerce fulfillment is becoming more and more critical.

Logical Partnerships Emerge for eCommerce Fulfillment

The importance of your online store is not lost to your eCommerce provider. Nor to any big shipping company, for that matter. With Amazon fulfillment setting the bar for fast home delivery, logistics providers are rushing to help businesses fulfill their eCommerce website orders. They’re also teaming up with platforms to provide faster eCommerce fulfillment in more markets.

For example, Shopify recently added DHL express as an international carrier option. This gives more Shopify customers lower shipping rates previously available only to customers with enterprise accounts. In a similar vein, FedEx this year debuted FedEx Fulfillment. This service combines warehousing, packing, and shipping for brands with eCommerce channels.

Use 3PLs to Get Inventory Anywhere

Your customers can be anywhere. But thanks to third-party logistics, you don’t need to invest in an Amazon-like infrastructure to get your products closer to them. Using 3PLs, you can hold the stock you need for eCommerce fulfillment practically anywhere in the world.

Automate eCommerce Fulfillment

While physical retailers sell on websites, pure-play eCommerce brands are opening physical stores. Meanwhile, both use marketplaces to reach more customers. This move to the omnichannel is the model of the future. However, the more channels you use, the more you have to do to manage order fulfillment. This increases the amount of time and resources you need to simply process and fulfill orders. Use technology to automate your business processes to help keep costs down as your business grows.

Integrate eCommerce to Your Other Channels

Speaking of costs, the amount of stock you carry can impact your bottom line. Without understanding how well your products sell through any given channel, business risks carrying too much or too little of something. This means increased carrying costs in the former case, and lost sales in the latter. The risk to your bottom line increases as you sell more and add more channels and markets. Manage stock, processes, and fulfillment through a single tool that gives you realtime visibility, accurate costs and in-depth reports for the most efficient supply chain possible.

Reading about Amazon Key reminded me of a question from a recent conversation with a friend. Are we living in a time of radical change? Or is it just a middle-aged rite of passage to talk about how different everything was when you were a kid?

My friend thinks so. After all, she said, every generation says, “Why, back in my day…”. I interpreted that to mean that every generation witnesses the same rate of change (political, economic, social, technological, etc.) This might be true in many respects. However, when it comes to technology and shopping, the change from 20 or 25 years ago really is remarkable.

Technology Has Completely Changed How We Shop

The way we shopped in the mid-1990s was pretty much the way we shopped in the 1970s. In either period, physical retail was your primary shopping option. Fast forward another 20 years, and thanks to technology, you can shop in a store, on your phone, or in your home. (And with the controversial Amazon Key, you don’t even have to be there when the courier delivers your order. But more on that later.)

Same Old, Same Old

Let’s say you wanted to buy something in the mid-1970s (clothes, an appliance, toys, etc.). First and foremost, you’d go to the mall, department store or other physical retailers. Alternatively, you might flip through a printed catalog and place orders by mail or phone. (Phones, remember, were stationary, analog and audio-only). Occasionally, a salesman would come by to pitch encyclopedias or a vacuum cleaner. How was 1995 that much different? Perhaps cable shopping networks wiped out the door-to-door salesman. Maybe email reduced postal orders. But otherwise, brick-and-mortar remained the dominant channel.

Technology Changed Everything

How different things are now, thanks to the acceleration of technological change. Since the 1990s, the Internet went from static HTML to the dynamic, multi-media web. Dial-up gave way to broadband while computers became pamphlet-thin. And smartphones arrived with more computing power than you could possibly need to process the data now running over 4G mobile networks. This foundation consequently gave rise to the omnichannel world that shoppers take for granted today. It allows them to shop and buy at any time, from any location.

So, What About Amazon Key?

So, what’s next? Probably no other company has had such an impact on how people buy and sell than Amazon. Its dominance relies to a large extent on its mastery of logistics, which gets products to customers’ doors cheaply and quickly. With Amazon Key, the company wants to open the customers’ door as well. Using a $250 door-lock/webcam setup, Amazon customers can allow delivery people access when they are not home. (The camera records the delivery for security purposes). Anecdotally, some people aren’t comfortable with this particular technological capability. Personally speaking, that would never fly, back in my day.

The Mechanism for Modern Selling

Whether consumers take to Amazon Key or not, the way people shop and buy will continue to change. Businesses must have the mechanism in place to adapt to how their customers behave. For that, they need an integrated system for managing and automating omnichannel sales and fulfillment.

The season leading up to Christmas is crucial to retailers in every market where it’s a holiday. In fact, language reflects its importance. They call it the Golden Quarter in the UK. In America, the season starts on Black Friday because that’s when holiday shopping pushes retail ledgers out of the red. No matter the market, though, analysts predict modest to significant sales increase, with one surprising forecast. People may spend more online than in stores pointing to a shift in omnichannel Christmas retail.

The New Reality of the Omnichannel Christmas Season

With so much sales happening in the lead-up to Christmas, the season seems to serve as a crucible of retail strategies. Because analysts expect consumers to do more holiday shopping earlier and online, rigid, siloed channels won’t do. In fact, US consumers may spend more online than in store for the first time ever, but only by a little. This shift to omnichannel Christmas buying patterns emphasizes the need for retailers to adopt an omnichannel strategy.

Will Online Overtake In-Store Sales in the US?

We’ve probably buried the lead in this post, but if a bombshell report bears out, some rigid department store models may be in trouble. For the first time ever, an annual report predicts that customers will spend more online than in stores this holiday season. The survey of 4,000 Americans shows they plan to spend 51% of their holiday budget online and 42% in stores. Last year, they split their budget evenly between the two. The bad news is that only 28% named department stores as their top shopping destination. Miracle on 34th Street never seemed more out of date.

Time Makes Omnichannel The New Normal

Generally speaking, time is the critical factor determining the new normal. Specifically, shoppers want to buy and receive products whenever and however they want. That’s what makes the omnichannel model imperative. And if 2017 is the year of the “omnichannel Christmas”, then time is a driving factor there, too.

While not all research predict consumers moving primarily online, they do confirm online shopping’s importance. This, in turn, renders physical store hours and traditional holiday season nearly meaningless. Consequently, shoppers start buying before Black Friday in America. Meanwhile, consumers in the UK will finish their Christmas shopping before December even begins, with only 9% leaving it to the last minute.

The Mechanism for the Omnichannel

The best news may be that consumers expect to spend more this year than they did in 2016, regardless of the channel. But, every year, we see the same thing. People will still shop in stores, but the accelerated growth goes to online channels. This points to the increasing importance of retailers to adopt an omnichannel approach. To capture as much business as possible, you want to integrate your online and in-store channels. You’ll need to present customers consistent branding, pricing and product availability. And you’ll do best to offer flexible shipping and fulfillment options. That seamlessness and flexibility form the core of the omnichannel approach. You just need to plan, prepare and bring your channels together in a way that makes it easier to manage.