Same Day Delivery means that inventory is delivered on the same day it was ordered. Ordered today, delivered tomorrow is already a standard with some e-commerce distributors. The next step is same day delivery.
Intralogistics requirements for same-day delivery
Same day delivery places high demands on intralogistics. These include:
- Effective warehouse management
- High degree of automation
- Flexible response capabilities
Delivery on the day of the order is not easily feasible. Faster service leads to sharply rising costs. Whether the costs are borne by the provider or transferred to the customer through higher prices is up to the provider’s calculation. Some companies offer a slightly less sophisticated 24-hour service. This means that the customer does not receive his order on the same day, but within 24 hours.
In order to fulfill all contractual agreements with the customer in Same Day Delivery, it is possible to work with fulfillment partners. Fulfillment partner support must work smoothly. In e-commerce, systems need to be integrated in order to respond flexibly. For this purpose, product information, such as ID, name, price, weight, photo and size, is integrated into a data record. In dynamic e-commerce, logistics processing must be flexible, fast and cost-effective.
Experts see high business potential in fast deliveries, which, according to various sources, makes same-day delivery a potential billion-dollar business. On the other hand, the volume of traffic on highways and in cities must not be disregarded, because today such response times can usually only be achieved using vans, which will result in greatly increased traffic and environmental pollution.
The road to multichannel retailing
Same Day Delivery is difficult to realize if the ordered inventory first has to travel many hundreds of kilometers on the highway. Large mail-order companies therefore sometimes rely on several distribution centers spread throughout the country in order to be as close to the customer as possible. Another modern approach integrates local retailers into e-commerce order fulfillment. In this way, the connected retailer can secure orders from the Internet and sell the inventory to the customer himself. The advantage is that the orders can first be offered to regional retailers, so the transport distance is at best only a few kilometers. For example, same-day delivery can now be realized via bicycle couriers, which also reduces the burden on the environment at the same time.
For more information on multichannel retailing, see Multichannel retailing – opportunities and risks.
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