The Future of Fulfillment is Wherever You Are

As a supply chain leader, you face numerous challenges. Chief among them is ensuring your customers receive products in a timely, efficient manner. But with evolving consumer expectations for convenience and increasingly complex fulfillment and delivery networks, how can you stay ahead of the curve?

Think about it from your perspective as a customer. You may be a supply chain professional, but you’re also a shopper. How do you like to find—and receive—your goods? Are you browsing your options online before heading into a store to purchase? Maybe you’re an avid online shopper, preferring the thrill—and convenience—of packages arriving at your door. Perhaps it varies by what you’re buying.

Consider the Consumer Perspective

You have your preferences, as do the hundreds of millions of other consumers spending their hard-earned dollars within the $4 trillion retail industry. 

The more shoppers demand convenience and optionality when it comes to purchasing and fulfillment, the blurrier the line between e-commerce and in-person shopping becomes.

Modern consumers like you now expect a unified, omnichannel experience when engaging with brands and retailers. Online and offline product availability and convenient options for rapid fulfillment – including in-store pickup and home delivery – are paramount to earning customer loyalty and repurchase.

Now, from your perspective as a supply chain professional, consider what’s needed to satisfy these sky-high consumer expectations. Does your organization support a blended customer journey that seamlessly transitions across channels and formats? If not, what would it take to make that a reality? 

The answer lies in cloud-based software and systems that enable fulfillment orchestration across a network, powering fulfillment wherever the customer may be.

The Convenience and Optionality Revolution

You know from your personal experience that consumers want to browse and shop both online and in-store, seamlessly blending their search, purchase, and delivery or pickup actions as part of their buying journey. 

Research backs this up. The share of U.S. e-commerce sales filled through pickup was up 76% in June 2023 compared with January 2019 according to the Wall Street Journal, and Digital Commerce 360 reports that 80% of the Top 1000 retail chains offered Buy Online Pick Up In Store (BOPIS) in 2022, up from 73% a year prior. 

Consumers also expect peak convenience, which translates to a shrinking tolerance for long delivery times. More than 90% of consumers view two- to three-day delivery as a baseline requirement, reports McKinsey. 

What’s more, the purchase consideration cycle compressed dramatically over the past several years. When the pandemic caused widespread store closures, shoppers became more willing to transact online for purchases both large and small. Pre-2020, would you ever have considered buying a washing machine or a piece of fine jewelry from your phone? What about today? 

The habits and behaviors consumers adopted during that time have stuck, and now, with only a phone in hand, shoppers can decide they want an item, watch a product demo, read reviews, and tap the buy button — all within minutes without leaving an app. 

The real magic happens when that ideal purchase experience is followed by an ideal fulfillment experience, as the customer receives their product quickly and efficiently, however is most convenient for them. This means that your organization must be prepared with omnichannel fulfillment that is ready for anything.

How Software Supports Fulfill from Anywhere 

McKinsey says “fulfill from anywhere” will become a de facto standard as retailers build models that can serve customers directly and rapidly. Success hinges on effectively integrating software and systems capable of orchestrating fulfillment across a network, wherever and however the customer may choose.

The future of fulfillment goes beyond a single brick-and-mortar store or a static, centralized warehouse. It is a dynamic ecosystem where every location, be it a retail store, a distribution center, or even a partner's facility, is connected and capable of fulfilling an order. 

This necessitates sophisticated software, connected throughout the network, that enables end-to-end, omnichannel fulfillment, from any location to any end customer. Only a centralized, integrated platform, including order and inventory management, network design, warehouse management, and real-time insights and analytics, will unlock the omnichannel capabilities needed to support fulfillment from any location.

The Future of Fulfillment is Wherever You Are

Fulfillment is evolving to encompass the varied and various ways you, as a consumer, prefer to purchase and receive goods. As a supply chain leader, you must embrace this evolution.

The future of fulfillment is wherever you are, and by implementing the software and systems that enable your organization to fulfill from anywhere, you’ll remain ahead of the retail curve and in control of the customer experience.