Last Mile Delivery: Really Folks?

 

One way to boost our will power and focus is to manage our distractions instead of letting them manage us. – Daniel Goleman

shiny_object

Okay, first a confession out of the gate. The title, quote and image above might lead you to believe that I’m judging last mile delivery (and the broader omni-channel retailing discussion that goes along with it) as a ‘shiny object’ distraction.

I know that’s not entirely true. But I believe it is at least partially true.

To be sure, retail is changing and it’s changing rapidly. Customers want more choices in terms of how they make purchases and how they get those purchases to their homes – and they aren’t super keen on paying a lot more for these choices.

Retailers who put their heads in the sand and don’t actively address these challenges will (and in some cases already do) find themselves in serious peril.

Where is last mile delivery headed? It’s still evolving – but getting into those details is not the point of this discussion. I’m going to stay in my lane. At the risk of oversimplifying things, a sale is a sale and the supply chain planning challenge is to have the product available where the sale will be fulfilled.

The beef I have is that all of the discussion about last mile delivery seems to be making the blanket assumption that retailers have everything aced right up to the last mile.

As if to prove my point, I received an unsolicited email today (God only knows how many supply chain related online publications have my email address at this point) asking for my participation in a survey with the title: “Can we solve the last mile?” The opening two sentences read as follows:

“The last mile is bearing the brunt of the eCommerce boom. Yet, it represents a great source of angst and expense for retailers and last mile providers alike.”

After that is a ‘sneak preview’ of survey topics that focus solely on last mile problems – the implication (likely unintended) is that the challenges in the last mile are completely independent of all the activities that precede them.

Retail out-of-stocks have been a major problem since they started measuring it (8% on average and double that during promotions). The most prevalent cause cited by all of the major studies is inventory management and replenishment practices at store level. Not surprisingly, the lack of attention on solving for these causes means that they haven’t yet magically vanished. Perhaps someday, if we keep wishing really hard…

It’s pretty clear that ‘non Amazon retailers’ will need to make use of their bricks and mortar store network to enable whatever last mile delivery options they intend to pursue. How will they be successful in that regard with such abysmal out-of-stock performance and no idea what the accuracy of their electronic on hand records are (if they even have them at all)?

The day is coming when customers will expect to see store on hand balances on your web page before they submit a ‘click and collect’ order – what happens when the website says you have 3 in stock, but there isn’t any to be found when the customer goes in to collect?

Finally, we can’t lose sight of the fact that the ‘omni’ in ‘omnichannel’ is a latin prefix meaning ‘all’ or ‘every’. One of those ‘every’ channels is customers walking into a store, getting a cart, selecting products and paying for them at the checkout – kickin’ it old school to the tune of 91.5% of total retail sales.

Yes, e-commerce is growing like crazy, but it’s going to be awhile yet before online selling is truly dominant in retail as a whole.

And if (when) that day comes?

Again, I’m not suggesting that working out the last mile won’t be critically important. I’m just saying that retailers still have some work to do in getting basics right (like being in stock and knowing how much is on hand) in order to make it all work.