Research released by Voxware indicates two thirds of consumers return online or phone purchases because of retailer error - usually delivering an item in the wrong size or color - and repeat business suffers as a result. On top of that, the returns process is flawed in many cases.
Despite a slight decline between 2009 and 2010, since 1999 the global land area farmed organically has expanded more than threefold to 37 million hectares, according to new research conducted by the Worldwatch Institute for its Vital Signs Online service.
Breaking down functional silos to create transparent and responsive end-to-end supply chains has long been an intractable supply chain challenge, but many companies are finding success using a control tower concept that gets everyone working off the same plan and focused on the same outcome.
To learn more about this approach, SupplyChainBrain convened a Power Lunch"”a roundtable discussion"”with four experts in the field: Paul Bittinger, former supply chain transformation manager, Procter & Gamble (now retired); Lora Cecere, founder and CEO, Supply Chain Insights; Don Gaspari, director, global materials and inventory, NCR Corp.; and Kirk Munroe, vice president of marketing, Kinaxis.
Technology solutions and staff training top the list of initiatives that companies are using today to improve global shipping performance and reduce costs, according to the Global Trade Management Report from Tompkins Supply Chain Consortium.
Everyone is changing their user interface these days"”even new automobiles have touch screens rather than buttons. However, not all UIs are created equal. Some of them are just pretty faces.
Retailers have been faced with big challenges, including the emergence of smartphone shopping and the continued e-commerce boom. It is no secret that today's e-commerce shoppers now expect to receive items quickly. Since retailers frequently offer comparable products at similar prices, speed of delivery is becoming an increasingly important factor for many online shoppers. This puts tremendous pressure on warehouse operators.
The use of highly scaled, shared, and automated IT platforms"”known as cloud computing"”is growing rapidly. Adopters are driven by the prospects of increasing agility and gaining access to more computing resources for less money. Large institutions are building and managing private-cloud environments internally (and, in some cases, procuring access to external public clouds) for basic infrastructure services, development platforms, and whole applications. Smaller businesses are primarily buying public-cloud offerings, as they generally lack the scale to set up their own clouds. But as attractive as cloud environments can be, they also come with new types of risks.
This will be the year that retailers take mobile seriously in all its forms and in all areas of the company. Of course, e-tailers have been highly aware of the need to employ mobile as another channel for the customer, but brick-and-mortar retailers are opening their eyes to the possibilities as well.
Consumer-oriented collaboration and file-sharing tools that have gained popularity as the workforce becomes increasingly mobile are customarily cheap, even free, for employees to use. But they could be costing businesses plenty, a recent study suggests.
