South African consumers are increasingly more comfortable with online ordering, considering most of the major players have converted to this platform.According to Anthea van Breemen, a director at Forte Warehouse Solutions, e-commerce is fast evolving and constantly growing, driven mostly by the convenience it offers the consumer.“Covid was not the cause for e-commerce but certainly accelerated the move to online, significantly shortening the development time as it would have happened nonetheless,” she told Freight News.The increased demand for e-commerce does, however, challenge traditional logistics and supply chain models. Companies are now forced to adjust their strategies to provide the service despite having a brick-and-mortar presence.“One of the considerations that these retailers have to take into account is where to distribute from when they have both a distribution centre as well as retail outlets,” explains Van Breemen.With FMCG e-commerce representing a growing share of the retail market, companies are looking at various options for their distribution.“One of our clients, for example, decided on distribution from the retail outlets where typically the walk-in customer and the online customer are the same. Each store manager is responsible for supplying their home deliveries,” says Van Breemen. “Business customers, it was found, were more easily serviced from a distribution centre. For a company servicing the restaurant industry, it was found that the chefs preferred the convenience of ordering online rather than making the phone call to a sales of f ice.”For retail, like restaurants, the ability to order any time of the day at a buyer’s convenience is extremely beneficial.But, says Van Breemen, in all these cases accurate stock and availability figures are critical for the online shops to function. “Integration with the ERP for both the retail outlets as well as for the distribution centre was necessa r y.”She explains that software allows the distribution centre to integrate the online sales orders with the ERP system to the warehouse management software which in turn allows it to be picked and confirmed on scanners in the warehouse. “The warehouse management software handles the picking priorities and load consolidation by route for the dispatch of the goods. The actual quantities are confirmed by integration back to the ERP for invoicing. In order to have the full cycle digitalised, the dispatch notes can interface to an ePOD App that in turn integrates back into the system,” she says. “For clients wanting an overview of the full supply chain from one dashboard we have a portal that combines data from all the software systems inside the company into one view with analytics and dashboards.”
