What is omnichannel?
The term omnichannel is being implemented in all businesses at a dizzying speed, as digitalization is giving rise to new forms of communication between customers and companies (online shopping, physical stores, apps, telephone, etc.). An omnichannel strategy refers to all the communication channels a company has and uses to communicate with users and customers. Its purpose is to provide the best possible user experience and meet the company’s commercial objectives.
What is the relationship between omnichannel and intralogistics?
There are many factors that can affect omnichannel, but we mainly always talk about the aspect where marketing influences, which is very important. There is also another very important factor, and this is logistics. No matter how much planning and metrics analysis are carried out on the buyer persona and their customer journey, if the warehouse is not sufficiently prepared to manage all the processes and meet delivery times at the different points, all the marketing and retail management and planning will have been for nothing.
The emergence of omnichannel and e-commerce has impacted the updating of operations, equipment, and software in logistics plants. Before e-commerce, warehouses only had to worry about fulfilling large orders from each store, but now, their equipment has had to be adapted to process both these large orders and smaller orders from the end customer.
End customers seek very fast purchases with almost immediate deliveries, so if we want to meet user expectations, we must have the facilities properly prepared to carry out the process successfully. To achieve this, it is necessary to automate processes, starting with the most repetitive ones, and have a balanced layout for the preparation and classification of large-volume shipments from stores and small packages from the end customer.
What should be taken into account when preparing a logistics plant for omnichannel?
First of all, you have to consider your starting space and investment. Then, you have to consider the number of references, the number of orders, the size of the goods, the number of returns (reverse logistics), and the number of geographic areas you cover. With all these factors under control, we can work on delivery times to ensure a satisfactory shopping experience for the end customer.