According to a recent report released by the renowned management consulting company Bain & Company, as affected by the COVID-19, consumers from Southeast Asia shifted their daily consumption from purchasing in stores to online shopping – which is relatable to everyone and not only limited to a certain area.
Bain & Company is expecting consumers will continue to shop online which would reshape the whole retail industry in the area and the e-Commerce and e-Logistics will surely grow continuously. Their report is based on the consumer markets data collected from the main economies of Southeast Asia, such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Online groceries market was not fully developed in the Southeast Asia as limited by logistics, yet along with the outbreak of the COVID-19, staying home, locking down and self-quarantine measures pushed the people to turn to online shopping which led to a three-time boost of the online groceries consumption. Furthermore, the report also collected data from respondents of a questionnaire, which they will continue to shop online for groceries shopping.
But online shopping platforms have to tackle with quotations all across different time zones or sources which usually take 3-5 days before the pandemic and the situation is getting more difficult during the outbreak and costs of shipping is drastically increased up to 10 times. e-Logistics is a way out of this tricky situation.
What is e-logistics?
e-logistics refers to all the operational processes involved in the setting up and management of an online business, that uses either an online store, Marketplace, or any other ecommerce platform.
This particular type of business requires very specific actions and processes, in most cases, completely different that a traditional logistics operation would require.
As online buying becomes more and more popular, ecommerce presents itself as a very valuable tool for stablished bussiesses and new sellers looking to reach wide audences or niches.
e-logistics benefits for your business
There are different ways of managing you ecommerce operation, each one with benefits and disadvantages. It is important to know your production, the market you are selling and the capacity of your operation in order to choose the most beneficial method. Here are some types of e-logistics solutions:
- In-house management: This modality will allow you to have full control of the organization of operations and the goods, what Is called an end-to-end service, but this also means full responsibility on shipping times and flow of shipments, which can result inconvenient and inneficient.
- Dropshipping: this method will ease your workload, but it doesn’t allow you to have full control over the quality of the goods or the time of the shipments.
- Outsourcing: this is a good solution to ease the working time without compromising quality or shipping time but it also means you’ll have a fixed agreement with a third party that may not accomodate to changes very often. Working with a partner specialised on e-fulfillment can be a perk to new or stablished businesses, since they get to work with experienced agents that can help them avoid any logistics mistakes while growing their sells.
As traditional logistics industry always has to deal with quotations, time zones and also different competitors and it’s often complicated, e-Logistics may fill the gap and facilitate buyers and sellers. Alongside with the growing market, Noatum eSolutions is aiming to cover the area of Southeast Asia and can seamlessly work hand in hand with small and middle enterprises to cope with the labor reducing and stock taking problems in the near future.