Significance of Dispatch Management in E-commerce Industry

According to a recent Statista report, the e-commerce market is expected to reach about 8.1 trillion dollars by 2026. 

An upsurge in the market leads to a significant increase in the volume of operations. This can lead to operational challenges where dispatchers have to handle multiple dispatches while accommodating customer expectations. Creating dispatch plans and managing end-to-end orders manually can lead to shipping delays and errors. All these operational challenges can result in reduced efficiency of logistics operations. To handle surging demand effectively and preserve profit margins, businesses need to focus on adapting strategic vision into their existing processes.

Dispatch management is an integral part of delivery operations that can significantly impact the efficiency of the fulfillment cycle. Here are the different ways in which dispatch management enables e-commerce businesses to manage and scale their existing delivery operations.

Dispatch Management in the E-commerce Industry 

E-commerce businesses receive a high volume of orders in a day of varying delivery SLAs. A faster order-to-delivery process needs to be facilitated to support and meet market requirements. Traditional or manual dispatch systems are not equipped enough to schedule deliveries based on various factors such as delivery windows, driver availability, shipment size, etc., given the complexities of scale that surging demand can bring in. Here is where the need for a modern dispatch management system which is built to cater to the needs of modern day e-commerce becomes relevant. 

Businesses have the potential not just to simplify dispatch management and improve strategic decisions, but also realize many more benefits of dispatch management software in the long run. 

Challenges in the E-commerce Industry 

Tracking online orders 

E-commerce dispatch operations consist of handling and managing multiple orders coming from different sources at the same time. With an exponential growth in average order volume, businesses struggle to balance dispatch and keep track of deliveries in progress. 

At times, there are instances where a proactive response from the dispatcher can prevent any unanticipated delivery disruption. In the absence of real-time tracking or alerts, the whole process becomes standstill or delayed. This, in return, fuels unwanted situations such as delayed deliveries, unhappy customer experiences, frustrated delivery resources, and many more. 

Shipping Errors 

Dispatch management in the e-commerce industry includes additional checks such as package size, package handling instructions (fragile fragile/ non-fragile), vehicle loading capacity, driver willingness to load and unload, and many more. While creating a dispatch plan, a dispatcher needs to go through the required checklist and generate order dispatch assignments accordingly. 

Failure to accommodate the additional checks can lead to further delays in the fulfillment cycle. Without dispatch management software, a dispatcher has to manually check all the required parameters and match them with delivery timelines. This level of manual handling becomes overwhelming and prone to error in the long run, ultimately impacting the dispatch process's overall efficiency. 

Keeping up with customer expectations

52% of your customers can switch to your competitor after having a single unpleasant experience. This reinforces the role of customer experience in your business's economic success. Customers look for quick deliveries with minimal shipping costs and expect a personalized experience with thorough delivery status transparency. 

This becomes an operational challenge for dispatchers as they have to quickly move captured orders for delivery while combining them with others to ensure less shipping costs are involved. 

Scaling e-commerce operations

Looking at the e-commerce market growth, businesses need to expand their existing operations to stay competitive. Investing in adding more assets (warehouses, resources, vehicles) is always a quick option to proceed. However, with tight competition and narrow profit margins, it might become challenging for e-commerce businesses to improve their bottom line. This is a consistent challenge for e-commerce businesses as they struggle to scale and expand their operations.

Role of Dispatch Management in overcoming e-commerce challenges 

There are many opportunities for the e-commerce sector to explore and embrace. Among these, the integration of dispatch management software stands out as one of the technological advancements focusing on the efficiency and growth of e-commerce operations. Here is how dispatch management software can bring solutions to existing e-commerce challenges.

Vehicle right-sizing through centralized order

Dispatch software enables dispatchers to create configurable workflows and accommodate a particular delivery request. Moreover, a centralized order management dashboard provides thorough visibility into additional checklists that need to be conditioned with shipment orders. It helps in quickly and efficiently right-sizing vehicles and drivers for particular shipments.

Real-time tracking updates

Integrating dispatch management software enables stakeholders to get real-time tracking updates on orders at every stage. This contributes to a better customer experience and helps reduce the frequency of WISMO calls. End-to-end tracking of orders that are out for delivery can be very effective in establishing a seamless delivery experience for all stakeholders involved.

Automated dispatch operations

Introducing automated processes to replace manual interventions in a dispatch process is an intelligent way to scale operations efficiently. Dispatchers can save time by manually creating and arranging dispatch batches. Automated workflows enable dispatchers to generate quick, ideal dispatch plans based on conditioned parameters. The faster turnaround time enables dispatchers and delivery agents to expedite the delivery process without overlapping resource delivery zones or creating two different allocations for a similar route order.

Towards a better approach 

The best approach to scaling e-commerce operations is to identify and fix the operational and performance bottlenecks in the complete fulfillment process. Dispatch management software plays a significant role in quickly evaluating the gaps and sharing insights to fix them before they become a delivery hiccup.

Choosing the right dispatch software adds agility, adaptability, and scalability and that can be a key contributing factor in ensuring your e-commerce business is progressing toward growth. DispatchOne, powered with advanced dispatch capabilities, can enable businesses to accommodate much-needed strategic vision in an existing order-to-delivery cycle.

Beyond seamless dispatch operations, we understand that every e-commerce business has its own challenges and expectations. Get in touch with our expert team to differentiate your businesses from others in the market!