Retailers and Warehouses ‘Risk Revenue Loss’ From Software Outages

New report exposes the hidden costs of ‘cheap’ shipment software

Retailers and warehouses are at serious risk of revenue loss if they select an unproven delivery management provider

nShift, the global leader in shipment software has released a new report examining the dangers of doing delivery management ‘on the cheap’.  Using unproven providers for mission-critical delivery capabilities increases the risks of significant disruption for organizations handling thousands of deliveries per day.  The report warns that delays or glitches on the technical side can soon snowball into significant operational and reputational challenges, including:

• Customer churn – once a customer suffers a late delivery, they will be inclined to shop around for a better experience.  Software outages in the warehouse can unwittingly fling a customer into the more reliable arms of a competitor.
• Reduced revenue – if a parcel intended as a gift arrives late it risks irrelevance.  Shoppers may simply demand their money back.
• Loss of reputation – today’s socially-savvy shoppers will take their late or missed-delivery complaints to social media.  These have a detrimental impact in putting their friends and family off buying from the brand, retailer or webshop in question.

Lars Pedersen, CEO at nShift said: “After the cost of manufacturing products, shipping represents the greatest expense for most retailers.  So it’s understandable that people are keen to cut costs where they can.  However, when they trust critical parts of their technological infrastructure to unproven providers, they risk disrupting the fulfilment process and compromising the customer experience.

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“nShift is trusted to provide mission-critical infrastructure to the world’s leading brands.  We are a long-term partner and have been serving customers for over 30 years.  Retailers, webshops and warehouses can trust nShift not to jeopardize crucial services by going down at critical moments.  Collectively, our customers trust our software to facilitate delivery of millions of packages a month.”

The report proceeds to explore how the right delivery management software can do more than guard against disruption.  It can help retailers, webshops and warehouses facilitate:

• Outstanding customer experiences – with the delivery options they expect at checkout to receive their parcels on their terms.  That could mean choosing between the cost, speed and sustainability of each delivery.  The best software will track the parcel at each stage of delivery and enable retailers to send branded communication to end customers.
• Fast deployment – aided by simple integrations with retailers’ existing tech stacks, and large carrier libraries.  Building carrier libraries manually can add significantly to the time and cost of deploying delivery management software.  Better to pick a tech provider that has the range of carriers in place to start with
• End-to-end capability – a single suite covering the entire delivery management process means less risk of errors and greater efficiencies overall because each part is designed to work with the others
• Returns that drive retention – four out of five customers won’t shop again with brands whose returns processes fail to meet their expectations. Done right, returns policies can reduce costs while also converting up to 30% of refund requests to exchanges

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