Topic of the week – The growth and importance of digital final mile platforms
Aside from when they are on your website, browsing and purchasing products, the final mile delivery process is the only opportunity for your customers to have any point of contact with retailers until their item is at their door. Digital final-mile platforms are now more common, utilising different technology from GPS to AI, providing real-time tracking and shipment status notifications to the end consumer, and analytics and reporting abilities to the retailers or shippers. Through new technological advancements, digital final mile platforms are evolving rapidly and have now become an integral part of the consumer purchasing process as well as being a must have for retailers. This has forced apparent growth within the market as the global digital final mile platform market is forecast to reach $21.7 billion USD by 2031.
As the eCommerce market continues to grow, as does the consumer need for a streamlined and transparent delivery experience. Using digital final mile platforms to enhance and optimise the delivery process not only benefits the user experience and the end consumer but it is also extremely useful for the retailer. Pro Carrier’s own platform, Horizon seamlessly integrates with APIs and which ever final mile partner is being used to provide accurate and transparent analytics and data insights down to the individual shipment. All delivery information is consolidated onto a dashboard that allows for the retailer to breakdown a range of shipments over a period of time or down to singular parcels. It is also a great way to optimise retailer’s delivery processes providing personalised tracking pages and shipment notifications to not only the end consumer but also for the retailer’s internal teams to use. And with the continual development of AI, machine learning and The Internet of Things, the experience will only continue to be enhanced with better predicted delivery times, optimised shipping routes and fully digital customer service to handle and resolve smaller customer queries faster.
Satisfying the changing customer needs within the final mile process is paramount as this ultimately results in creating brand loyalty and repeat purchases. Providing shipment visibility and tracking as well as keeping the customer up to date throughout the delivery process is vital, which is why the digital final mile platform market is experiencing such growth, a 14.5% Compound Annual Growth Rate from 2022 to 2031 says eCommerceNewsUK.
In other news
A recent report from Descartes Systems Group has shown that companies are now opting to implement automation technology in order to mitigate workforce shortages. The study showed companies are aiming to improve the productivity and efficiency of their workers by implementing automation to handle “non-value-added and repetitive tasks” also with a focus on employee retention. 54% of those surveyed are focused on automating such tasks with the top choices for integrating technology lying with delivery route optimization (54%), driver mobile productivity (45%) and real time shipment tracking (53%).
eCommerce Market Stats
See some statistics relating to this week’s topics in the eCommerce market below.
eCommerce Delivery Stats
Reasons for cart abandonment related to delivery in Europe:
- Delivery too expensive – 50%
- Delivery too slow – 27%
- Not enough delivery options – 15%
Top delivery options online shoppers want to use in the future in the UK:
- eTransportation e.g. electric vans – 50%
- Traditional delivery methods – 42%
- Cargo bike/eBike delivery – 32%
*Statistics sourced from Statista
That’s all for this week…
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