Lightwell Business Technology Blog

We're excited to be presenting at IBM Amplify with our customer, DHL eCommerce and our partner, IBM on the topic of omnichannel order management and fulfillment. If you're attending Amplify, we hope you'll add this to your agenda. 

The session is timely because today DHL eCommerce announced the expansion of their e-Commerce Fulfillment solution in the US.  This solution enables retailers to accelerate fulfillment and delivery without increasing costs, which has been a challenge for most retailers due to the required capital and complexity.

The quote contained in the announcement provides an excellent background for our session on Wednesday morning:

“The e-commerce market in the U.S. is estimated to have grown by 15.6% in 2016 with sales topping $531 billion¹, and increasingly e-tailers are seeking fulfillment solutions to enable an omni-channel experience for end consumers,” said Lee Spratt, CEO DHL eCommerce Americas, “We see a huge demand from U.S. e-commerce players needing best-in-class e-commerce logistics solutions and we’re expanding our capabilities to support these growing demands."

The Amplify session will provide detail on how the solution helps retailers improve their omnichannel commerce operations and the customer experience. If you're heading to Amplify, read on to learn more about the session and add it to your calendar.  

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Logistics companies are constantly under pressure to deliver newer and more competitive services. Their customers have high expectations, drawn from experiences with online services such as Amazon, regarding the information they expect, and how they expect to receive it.

As we all know, the supply chain is already under immense pressure, and providing real-time order information can prove a headache in certain areas such as in-transit and customs.

Traditionally, these information requests have been managed using Web Services and EDI, but there are issues. EDI is great for interactions that trigger business processes, such as order and purchase order transactions, or initiating returns. However, when it comes to “secondary” interactions such as “where’s my order?” using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to make those calls is faster to set up and execute than Web Services or EDI.

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Unhappy Returns

If you’re like most of us, you’re still picking pine needles out of the corners of your family room (if you’ve even taken down your tree, that is), scraping dripped candle wax off your furniture, and you have at least one shopping bag filled with presents to return that weren’t quite right.

Maybe you thought you ordered Women’s size 8 slippers for your 16-year old daughter, but you actually received Men’s size 11. And since you ordered online, now you have to package it up, print out a label, call UPS, etc., etc. Not that I’d know anything about that sort of mistake…

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