Retailers are making the move from multichannel and segregated fulfilment to a truly omnichannel model, where fulfilment capacity and stock availability can be flexibly deployed into any channel as dictated by customer demand. But they find themselves challenged by the complexity these efforts pose for underlying logistics support systems.
“Retailers need to conduct periodical supply network optimisation to ensure distribution nodes are at the right locations. They also need to bring parcel shipments into enterprise transportation planning and optimisation and adopt local routing tools to efficiently plan store delivery routes,” says George Lawrie, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research.
