by Jesta I.S. | March 25, 2021
A shortage of parts, shipping delays and rising costs are just some of the supply chain challenges that wholesalers and retailers have been tackling during the pandemic.
In February 2021, Arvind Gupta, President of Jesta. I.S., participated in an episode of ProShip’s ParcelCast hosted by Justin Cramer, ProShip’s Co-founder. They discussed some of the omnichannel shipping challenges facing the B2C and B2B markets.
“It’s all coming together as unified commerce,” said Arvind Gupta. “Whether you’re interacting in a call centre with a business or individual consumer, or you’re responsible for the e-commerce side of the business, or you’re an associate in a physical store, everybody has to have access to the same information about the order and that’s where the future is leading us. Businesses have a very long catch up to get to that single version of the truth.”
Listen to Episode 6: Coordinating Supply Chain Productivity for an Omnichannel World >>
The podcast also addressed the effect the pandemic has had on customer expectations.
“On one side, agile brands, retailers and manufacturers are looking to offer a variety of options to customers whether it’s BOPIS or BOPAC, or making an appointment to show up in a safe environment to get products directly,” Arvind Gupta said.
“On the other side, retailers are increasingly shortening the last mile,” he continued. “The pandemic forced a bunch of retailers to turn their stores into dark stores. The ones that were more agile and in front of the digitization journey, turned those dark stores into mini fulfillment centres. As opposed to having a product leave from a distribution centre on the other end of the country, they got the store nearest to the customer to act as a fulfillment centre and got the product shipped from there.”
The podcast went on to explore how elevating and optimizing shipping workflows through a multi-carrier shipping integration is also essential to meeting the expectations of online shoppers.
Tune in to the podcast for more.
