OCTOBER 201819The Game Changer - And then a boom came with e-Commerce companies. In a short span of time, these companies created a large customer base by offering the dis-counted prices, quick deliveries and easy replacement. Off course these parameters helped them to grow the business; however the biggest contributor was the con-venience that was offered to the customers. One could order what they need from any location with a simple click. This was the revolu-tionary phase in Indian consumer market. The availability of internet at higher speeds and better rates added further penetration of these e-Commerce businesses and their products. This growth of e-Com-merce is now gaining momentum even in groceries. Big giants in e-Commerce have started selling groceries through their portals.Though there are different opinions in the society that prob-ably this growth of e-Commerce organizations (especially in grocer-ies) will adversely impact the mom and pop shops whereas few says that it will keep their business alive. Without going into that debate, we need to recognize one definite thing and that is the technological growth. Right from front end of `or-dering portals' to back end of man-aging such a huge logistics need advanced technologies which will improve efficiencies and accura-cies in deliveries while keeping the overheads to minimum.This is a great phase for the Indian technology companies (or individual freelancers) to provide the smart solutions to these orga-nizations. Creating user friendly and attractive websites and Mobile apps, integrating secure and safe payment gateways is just a begin-ning. Handling these orders and effectively managing the ware-houses is the next steps. Tech-nology can really play a big role in the backend management. The smart shopping carts can help the staff to select the goods from the right racks while processing any specific order. It can also be ex-tended to the next level, where the smart cart can define the best and most efficient route to be followed by the warehouse staff member while picking the goods from the warehouse. This will save time for the staff member and he/she can close more number of orders per day resulting into faster deliveries to the end customer. Order man-agement of the warehouse can be simplified by using IoT technology (Internet of Things) to take a stock of goods and push orders to their suppliers automatically. This is none other than the Kanban system used in manufacturing plants in a more advanced way and at massive scale to reduce laborious work of keeping stocks.Digitalization a BoonThese online orders and deliver-ies will generate immense data. One will need good data analyt-ics to analyze this data and define trends based on the ordering pat-terns of their consumers. This data analysis opens for further avenues and more business opportunities. Based on the trends, the ware-house can define the stock quan-tities for various types of goods. Warehouse can also design their layouts and locations for certain items based on fast moving v/s slow moving trends. This will be a con-tinuous improvement process to improve efficiencies.Technology helps for dispatch and deliveries. Few of the e-Com-merce companies have tried us-ing Drones to deliver the orders. Off course it is at the preliminary stage and it might take some time to be implemented in India due to other concerns over safety and security. However, India is not so far from other technologies (If not Drone) which will support the delivery system. Right from front end of `ordering portals' to back end of managing such a huge logistics need advanced technologies which will improve efficiencies and accuracies in deliveries while keeping the overheads to minimumAbhijit Butala
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