How Retailers Can Balance Customer Preferences and Operational Success

The change in how customers want to receive orders has unleashed a paradox in the retail space. 

On one hand, customers have new preferences for when and how they receive their purchases. They might want to order the same day or pick it up online in-store (BOPIS). Each option added is one more layer, process, or task that must be managed.

On the other hand, a vast majority of retail executives reported that operational efficiency was vital to their long-term success. With margins for many retailers reported at around 2 to 3% in that same report, there is little room for bloated processes or anything that drags on productivity. 

Since they can’t deny customers’ preferences, many retailers try to balance these conflicting priorities. We will discuss how retailers reclaim time and return to their core competencies by strategically applying last-mile orchestration software. 

Battling high overhead tax with delivery logistics

Overhead tax is a term coined by writer Cal Newport, referring to how every new project or task brings a certain amount of administrative work. That might mean emails, meetings, monitoring processes, or any other work that “surrounds” the work you’re trying to do. 

However, “Because the number of hours in the day is fixed,” writes Newport, “These administrative chores will take more and more time from your core work, slowing down the rate at which these objectives are accomplished.”

This is exactly the situation the grocery chain Lunds & Byerlys encountered when it first implemented same-day delivery. The approach they took for this service involved staffing and running a fleet of their own trucks, which added additional stress to their team. 

“We were constantly worried about trucks and drivers. So we were maintaining trucks. We were trying to replace drivers when they were leaving. We were trying to fill in for sick drivers when they were sick.” Jenny Pearsont told us in conversation. “We were just trying to maintain stability within our delivery. And it took a lot of time and there were a lot of obstacles.”

Other retailers such as Giant Eagle and Office Depot ran into these same blockers when they wanted to scale their same-day delivery service. “Obviously we wanted to have a flawless execution from a same-day delivery service.” Brittany Pachecho of Office Depot said, but unfortunately they found that the team “Couldn't quickly move internally [to add additional same-day delivery service providers (DSPs)].”  

Heather Feather at Giant Eagle had a similar experience. “We had partnered directly with some different delivery partners, but knew that growing the home delivery business specifically was going to be key to our success and future growth.” 

Trying to build the program using in-house resources put undue stress on these organizations, and they began to realize that they needed to find another path forward.

Turning to technology for orchestration

When it comes to offering same day delivery, the biggest struggle retailers face is the availability of drivers. 

Lunds & Byerlys had this concern with their own fleet, while Giant Eagle and Office Depot worked directly with one or two DSPs. If the volume of orders gets too high, an order might be delivered late or not arrive at all. 

While this can be monitored internally by a team, it may not be in the organization's best interest when it comes to efficiency. As the adage goes, “just because you can doesn't mean you should.” Instead of just watching orders pass through the process, those people and resources could be used more strategically.

Recognizing this was what led all three retailers to find a last mile orchestration platform that could:

• Be easily integrated and implemented to get started quickly
• Offered flexibility and the ability to work with multiple DSPs
• Give visibility and control over deliveries without being resource-intensive

Searching for these three qualities led them to form partnerships with Delivery Solutions.

Ease of integration in particular was a huge boon for the Office Depot team. “It's really truly a plug-and-play solution,” said Brittany from Office Depot, “[If a DSP is a partner with Delivery Solutions] we can quickly add them into our orchestration and allow them to be a provider for our program. So the opportunity for us was being more nimble.”

Heather from Giant Eagle, had a similar view, telling us that “when we learned about Delivery Solutions and their capabilities to quickly onboard different delivery partners and apply orchestration roles…That seemed like our best shot to do one integration point on our side and have access to all of these different partners”

"There's a lot of flexibility in [Delivery Solutions], I would say too,” Jenny added, “In whether it be business rules or just priorities that we might have within our needs."

What’s important to all three of these brands isn’t just the fact that they reclaimed time, it’s what they did with it.

Focusing on what’s important: customers

Each of these brands has been able to focus on their larger objectives but with a core focus on providing the best experience possible to their respective customers.

For Brittany Pacheco from Office Depot, Delivery Solutions provides a unique lens into the lives of consumers and how they shop because of our platform’s robust analytics: "We can really hone in and we understand who our customers are and we can really go after and target".

Her vision is echoed in their streamlined approach to digital commerce experiences, from the content management system to how shoppers traverse each shopping journey from search to checkout. 

"This platform allows us to be much more smart about how we are connecting the dots between our program and profitability. So it's an awesome platform from the perspective of always meeting the customer because we have multiple DSPs."

As for Giant Eagle and Lunds & Byerlys, their teams have been able to focus on providing quality products and service to their shoppers rather than spending their time thinking about logistics and shipping. “ My team within corporate spends a lot less time thinking about delivery,” Jenny from Lunds & Byerlys said, “They don't think about maintaining the trucks. They don't think about drivers. They just get to do other work, which has been excellent.”

Giant Eagle, meanwhile, has been able to address food insecurity in the Pittsburgh area. So, we are very passionate about helping to address food insecurity. 

“There were some specific areas here in Pittsburgh that were classified as food deserts. We essentially mapped out [those ‘food deserts’] and using Delivery Solutions can make sure that those customers [living in those areas] get free delivery. We don't charge a delivery fee into those areas. We have since replicated that into a number of different neighborhoods across Pittsburgh and Ohio.”

Meet customer demands and boost operational efficiency

Delivery Solutions platform has helped these retailers—all our customers—focus on what they do best: creating buying experiences for their customers no matter how they prefer to interact with their brand. 

By streamlining the processes and logistics surrounding the last mile, our clients can focus on what matters most to both their customers and their overall brand.

“Our area of expertise was not the logistics around delivering groceries,” Jenny of Lunds & Byerlys said, “Our area of expertise is groceries and shopping and the quality of our products. So I think it became a pretty easy decision to move to outsourcing that.”