Behind every detail in retail
Gain a competitive advantage with precision at every step of your retail supply chain.
Sustainability starts with efficiency
Every brand, irrespective of the industry that it belongs to, aims at becoming more efficient. What if, with this efficiency, brands can also achieve the larger goal of sustainability?
The retail industry often struggles with sustainability as brands consider it an additional investment. But the truth is that, by embracing an approach that focuses on building efficient supply chains, retailers can easily achieve sustainability in the long run.
This can be done through better packaging, optimised delivery routes, minimising food wastage, and more. In this interview, Johanna Hainz, Global Head of Retail, explains how efficient planning can help the retail industry become more sustainable.
Flexible Warehousing and Distribution - Key to Omnichannel Success
The online marketplace is here to stay. Covid-19 has validated this with a rapid spike in demand for products online. This has forced retailers to restructure the top-to-bottom frameworks of their supply chains. To not just identify inefficiencies in logistics operations, but also find a way to keep up with this paradigm shift without letting their working capital take a hit.
That said, one of the functions that is bound to help retailers keep up with a global shapeshifting supply chain is a flexible warehousing and distribution solution. Flexibility that will help retailers speed up or slow down their inventory flow by closely considering demand patterns of their products. Not just online, but also across different points of sale.
In this whitepaper, Maersk and Reuters talk about opinion, insights, and findings on how a flexible warehousing and distribution solution can help unlock omnichannel success.
Retail supply chains: Learning lessons from disruption
At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic the images of empty supermarket shelves highlighted the limitations of just-in-time supply chains, but how did retailers really fare in the face of the crisis? Even before the arrival of the virus supply chains had been in transition, impacted by a range of factors such as changing consumer preferences, evolving trade conditions or increased pressure around sustainability ‒ requirements which have forced retailers to rethink their procurement strategy. However, general preparedness seems to be lacking. According to a global survey of supply chain executives conducted by The Economist Intelligence Unit, retail sector respondents are less likely to agree that their organisation reacts well to disruptions in the supply chain than their counterparts in the lifestyle and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sectors.
Adapting to a Changing Retail Supply Chain
The spread of COVID-19 and ensuing isolation measures has led to a drastic shift in consumer demand that is presenting huge challenges to retailers. For many retailers, forced shop closures and cautious consumer spending has led to a significant downturn in demand for non-essential items resulting in a massive surplus of inventory. Conversely, essential items such as food and medical supplies have seen unprecedented spikes in demand resulting in significant out-of-stock scenarios.
Keeping the Shelves Stocked
Trends and Challenges in Supermarket Supply Chains
Supermarket supply chains are complicated at the best of times. However, this complexity is only likely to grow amid rising geopolitical pressures and black swan events like COVID-19 which have exposed just how vulnerable global logistics is to disruption. As a result, businesses across the world are shifting focus towards improving the resilience and flexibility of their supply chains in order to better prepare for future disruptions. For supermarkets, however, this poses some unique challenges that are exacerbated by decreasing profit margins, waning customer loyalty, and the rise of omnichannel shopping.
In this report, we hear from Maersk’s Global Head of Retail, Johanna Hainz, Global Head of Cold Chain Logistics, Katharina Poehlmann, and European Head of Program Management, Jordi Avellaneda De La Calle, on the challenges supermarkets are facing today and what solutions are available to them.
The changing shape of E-commerce Logistics
With millions of consumers switching online amidst stay-at-home measures and the forced closure of non-essential stores, lifestyle companies have had to pivot their logistics to meet the extraordinary rise in e-commerce demand. However, the impact of COVID-19 has made e-commerce logistics more complex than ever before with even the most established online lifestyle companies being pushed to the limit.
In this report that you can get access to below, we examine COVID-19’s impact on e-commerce logistics and interview Martin Holme, Maersk Global Head of Supply Chain Management and E-commerce Logistics and Christoph Stork, Maersk Global Managing Director of E-commerce Logistics to explore what it means for supply chains now, and in the future.
