It almost seems like magic that you can now receive most consumer products, right from t-shirts to coffee tables, with the press of a button. Virtually unheard of close to thirty years ago, more and more consumers across the globe are discovering the delight of e-commerce retail every year.
Globally, retail e-commerce sales touched $4.9 trillion in 2021, and is expected to reach $7.4 trillion in 2025.
Growth is not guaranteed
On the surface, it seems like a golden opportunity for all players in e-commerce retail. But the reality is that growth–whether it is through new markets, new products or new customer segments–is becoming increasingly elusive in the face of rapidly changing market dynamics.
Evolving consumer patterns, new regulations, and rising costs mean that growth is largely possible by
Placing the end-customer’s needs front and center: Apart from increasing the speed of deliveries, customers also want convenient delivery slots, a seamless e-commerce shopping experience, real-time updates on status, ease of communication, and ease of making returns as part of their top priorities.
Ensuring that last-mile fulfillment becomes a revenue driver: This is crucial, as last-mile fulfillment is said to account for 53% of the costs of logistics operations. And the complexities that come with route planning and order allocation exponentially increase with each order.
Businesses leading this evolution are poised to capture a growing market of $132 billion, with over 53% of consumers willing to pay more for premium delivery options.
However, when it comes to reducing the time taken for receiving orders, this is easier said than done, as market leaders such as Amazon have already had a heads up. They have been steadily building their capabilities for the better part of two decades. You can see this in their average delivery times reducing over the years.
A new direction for the ecosystem
However there is hope. By 2030, effective data-based solutions such as dynamic rerouting can reduce emissions by 30%, congestion by 30%, and delivery costs by 25% when compared to a “do nothing” baseline.
History is filled with examples of inventors setting out to create one thing, only to discover something wholly different. In 2014, Nishith Rastogi and Geet Garg wanted to improve the safety of women passengers on roads. While working on an application that notified users of route deviations, they found that a similar solution can be used by companies to track deliveries in real-time.
The duo had discovered a hidden opportunity, and in 2015, they founded Locus to solve the toughest problems in last-mile logistics. For many years, last-mile logistics has been a complicated endeavor requiring significant expertise, patience, and capital to get right. This challenge lent itself well to what Locus has evolved to be today.
Over time, we had developed a gamut of enterprise-grade solutions, right from fulfillment automation, track and trace and dispatch management software to hybrid fleet management and providing insights and analytics.
Locus Dispatch Management Platform: The latest evolution in enabling last-mile excellence
Throughout our journey, we have partnered with all kinds of brands, right from ambitious, hyper-growth startups to leading enterprises with a global presence. This is how we got a first-hand understanding of their needs.
What stood out was that in today’s increasingly fast-paced environment, everyone needed a seamless experience while juggling multiple products. This meant reducing the need for repetitive manual tasks, ensuring complete synchronization between new products and those that are already onboarded, streamlining notifications and alerts, and improving visibility of operations by consolidating multiple views. Products also needed all relevant data to be standardized and have high fidelity across the board. In short: they all needed to have the same source of truth.
Today, organizations also need these siloed products to be up and running in the shortest possible time. This meant bypassing the friction that comes with the entire product procurement process: Issuing proposals, shortlisting and establishing trust with vendors, negotiations, testing and onboarding the product, and carrying out the change management process.
By taking a hard look at the various options available, we realized that the best possible way to deliver value to brands for their next phase of growth is by integrating all our diverse solutions into a single unified platform.
Locus’s Dispatch Management Platform (DMP) is a real-world ready platform that enables excellence in last-mile logistics.
The Locus Platform makes every delivery more efficient than the last by uncovering deep-lying inefficiencies with advanced analytics. Its insights also equip workforces for excellence, and enable companies to scale with lower emissions.
With the Locus DMP it is possible to attain up to 99.5% SLA adherence for your last-mile deliveries. It has been battle-tested across 200+ global deployments. From e-commerce to food delivery and omnichannel retail, we have worked with a variety of businesses to power delivery experiences that create loyal and repeat customers.
The platform also enables sustainable growth as it helps scale last-mile operations with fewer carbon emissions. With a 15% increase in the number of orders per driver, and a 10% increase in vehicle utilization, workforces can be equipped for excellence by getting more done in less time. So, at the end of the day, they get a chance to spend more quality time with their loved ones.
It also makes the flow of information, right from planning to execution, seamless for better decision-making. With DMP, brands can gain unparalleled visibility of order fulfillment across channels—be it captive, contracted, or carrier—and across models—be it scheduled, on-demand, or recurring. Brands can scale with new functionalities in no time by onboarding DMP’s modules as and when they require, achieving the growth they seek through last-mile excellence.
At Locus, innovation will continue to be guided by meaningful on-ground changes. Our journey from product to platform is a testament of our commitment to this timeless principle.
Try a demo with Locus to accelerate your growth with its real-world ready Dispatch Management Platform.
We’re at the Gartner Supply Chain Symposium/Xpo™ 2022! Come visit us at booth #236 from June 6-8th. We’ll also be giving a talk on fueling last-mile growth. To know more, or to book a meeting with us, click here.