In 2020, e-commerce transactions skyrocketed to new heights as consumers opted for online shopping to protect their health. According to ACI Worldwide, a global leader in real-time digital payments, there was a 24% increase in year-over-year e-commerce transactions in December 2020 compared to 2019. With this increase — driven largely by the pandemic — retailers are beginning to experience issues with scaling their delivery services.
According to the Reuters Supply Chain Last Mile Report, only 8% of retailers are routing these deliveries themselves, while logistics service providers are being asked to provide these solutions to their customers. Operating a last-mile delivery service requires more resources and human capital than many logistic providers are used to managing, leading to a rise in technology solutions for retailers to manage their third-party relationships, and more importantly, to provide data-driven insight on their delivery partners.
Bringg, a company that helps customers digitize their last-mile ecosystems, recently announced its Delivery Hub solution has seen elevenfold growth of its order growth over the past 12 months due to increased last-mile delivery demand. The platform has the ability to pull capacity from third-party delivery partners like DoorDash, Postmates, Uber, Lyft and Glovo.
In an interview with FreightWaves, Niko Avrutov, vice president of alliances, described how Bringg’s customers are using the Delivery Hub to onboard and manage new last-mile fleets to meet customer demand.
“The Delivery Hub connects customers to our network of delivery partners to meet customers’ instant delivery needs,” he said. “Customers can integrate their systems into one control tower to optimize both planned and on-demand delivery models.”
On its cloud platform, Bringg customers have real-time visibility of its delivery agents to update customers on status and access data to make better inventory and warehousing decisions. Integrations with transportation management systems and customer relationship management platforms make the Delivery Hub a great tool for medium-sized to enterprise businesses that are looking to scale their technologies long term.
Avrutov touted Bringg’s ability to democratize data for customers who need access to this information for optimal decision making. Other platforms make it difficult for third-party sellers to make data-driven decisions, which gives those platforms leverage over the sellers’ overall growth. For example, Amazon has gotten pushback in the past for using data to compete with its third-party sellers and has used its leverage to make decisions on whom sellers can use for delivery, like last year’s ban of FedEx.
“We want to give a voice to third-party sellers,” said Avrutov. “We want them to know where their orders are coming from and let them make decisions on what delivery partners are optimal for their business.”
Bringg does not want to control its customers’ routing guides, but instead looks to teach them ways to prepare their company to scale their operations. In its 2021 eCommerce Delivery Best Practices guide, the company describes ways to build an efficient e-commerce platform as well as automate dispatch and routing services, and it lists benefits of a branded customer experience.
“Many of our new customers went from managing one to five fleets and now find themselves managing five to 10,” said Avrutov. “That can be a lot of growth for companies to manage, but with the Delivery Hub they can scale their delivery fleets without having to worry about the platform now scaling with them.
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