A few years ago, a small- or mid-sized business might have been able to accommodate a few asks for same- or next-day delivery by sending out a warehouse or store team member in a company vehicle. However, that all changed when large retailers made ultrafast delivery for online orders commonplace enough that customers began to expect it from all of the brands they support. Possessing the capability for same- or next-day deliveries quickly went from a nice-have to a must-have. As U.S. e-commerce sales crossed the $1 trillion mark in 2022, the number of customers wanting speedier deliveries skyrocketed.
In response, companies have begun to reimagine their fulfillment, warehousing and delivery strategies. For example, some are adding additional distribution points closer to their end customers. This approach can help close last-mile supply chain gaps, but it doesn’t guarantee that regular carriers will operate in those areas. Conversely, others have implemented on-demand delivery capabilities near their stores or warehouses, though this practice severely limits the markets in which these services can be offered.
Using crowdsourced delivery in combination with on-demand warehousing, senders can get closer to customers regardless of any limitations posed by current logistics and transportation infrastructure. You’ll be able to quickly position inventory in new markets without incurring the exorbitant costs associated with purchasing and activating a new warehouse.
Using Ware2Go’s national on-demand warehousing network eliminates the need to own assets in every market. Then you can loop in the Roadie national crowdsourced delivery network, allowing your business to ramp up fulfillment and distribution quickly while forgoing the complexity of managing numerous regional and same-day couriers across multiple geographies.
Does fast delivery now equal same-day delivery?
It’s no secret that online shoppers expect fast delivery options like two-day, next-day or same-day. In fact, the vast majority of customers now simply assume fast delivery means same-day delivery.
Meeting these expectations requires fulfillment locations in close proximity to customers. This is an expensive proposition for SMBs, 79% of whom grappled with higher warehousing costs in 2022 and 36% of whom also spent more time managing their labor forces.
With 89% of SMBs currently managing at least some fulfillment in-house and 45% wanting to divert their teams away from these tasks and recenter them on core priorities, more of these companies are outsourcing logistics, fulfillment and transportation to reliable partners.
6 benefits of on-demand warehousing plus crowdsourced deliveries
As UPS-owned companies, Ware2Go and Roadie do the heavy lifting for SMBs that don’t have the time or resources needed to build out national fulfillment infrastructure. Using a nationwide network of on-demand warehouses, Ware2Go aggregates its customers’ order volume and then leverages that volume to negotiate with top-tier third-party logistics providers for labor and storage space. Then, Roadie’s crowdsourced delivery platform supports urgent, same-day and local next-day delivery of just about anything, anywhere, across the nation.
With Roadie and Ware2Go in your corner, you can:
- Improve logistics efficiency. Reduce transit times and deliver orders to a larger percentage of your customer base faster than ever.
- Expand delivery options. Give your customers the option to get their orders same-day or next-day by more readily positioning products near key markets.
- Control your growth. Scale your business on your terms with a robust, nationwide on-demand warehousing and fulfillment network.
- Collect better data. Leverage Ware2Go/Roadie technology platforms to track sales patterns and gain customized inventory and distribution insights based on that customer data.
- Integrate your systems. Connect current supply chain and ecommerce systems to Ware2Go’s FulfillmentVu platform to integrate inventory and order data streams.
- Decrease your carbon footprint. With 30% of merchants concerned about the sustainability of their current fulfillment models, combining orders and shipping them in bulk makes far more sense than shipping single packages across the country. Moving last-mile fulfillment to local fulfillment centers could lower last-mile emissions between 17-26% by 2025.
Level the playing field
Consumers are bombarded with narratives about economic uncertainty, which has caused them to give more careful consideration to the purchases they make. Given the now near-synonymous consumer perceptions about terms like fast delivery and same-day delivery, your company must be able to act quickly once a customer places an order if you hope to compete with other sellers.
Using on-demand warehousing and crowdsourced delivery, SMBs can provide the options customers want without having to build out their own fulfillment and delivery infrastructures to support those desires. Thanks to options like these, SMBs can stand their ground in the highly competitive ecommerce market, where customers will bail out after one bad experience.
To see how crowdsourced delivery and on-demand warehousing can help you scale your ecommerce business, reach out to Roadie and Ware2Go today.
