What they wanted
A European retail platform is rapidly expanding their ecommerce business with double digit growth. Continuous growth can only be ensured with access to a wide range last mile services at sufficient growth of capacity, high service standards and low cost. This holds for first party sales, shipped from multiple own warehouses, but also for third party platform sales covering many unique supply chains.
IG&H was asked to create a data driven, future proof distribution vision serving immediate actions to optimize the current distribution setup. Furthermore, our vision should help with shaping an agenda that expands and enhances the distribution setup in a cost effective but highly innovative manner, making sure that our client remains a frontrunner in the ecommerce market.
What we did
First, we started with a commercial evaluation and redesign phase of the current distribution offering. Commercially the current customer propositions, not limited to next day, same day and instant, were evaluated for future customer relevancy and margin contribution. Furthermore, we identified and evaluated several necessary last mile proposition innovations surrounding sustainable delivery, pickup points and parcel lockers. Together, they form the basis for several distribution services to be considered, based on the operational evaluation.
In the operational phase we further designed the distribution setup by modelling and optimizing the entire distribution setup. To do this, we created a digital twin of the entire distribution supply chain, to gain advanced knowledge in cost, capacity and scaling dynamics of all current networks. To design future networks, we used prescriptive data science algorithms to create supply chain blueprints build to outperform the market. Last but not least, we’ve advised on technology, data infrastructure and data & analytics capabilities required to win the game.
What we achieved
We have enabled our client to provide a continuously evolving, highly competitive last mile customer experience that will remain so for the coming years. As a result, part of the fundament has been laid to ensure continued growth and further increase profitability of our client.