Online Retail Supply Chain Conference

I spent the first two days of this week at the Online Retail Supply Chain Conference in Melbourne #orscc16.

Without doubt the highlights of the conference were :

• The colorful language and the entertaining presentation by Justin Dry from Vinomofo
• The non standard approach to omni channel retailing as described by James Wakefield and Robin McGowan from InStitchu
• The final keynote by John Winning from Appliances Online and the benefits of using “good data” not necessarily “big data” to drive customer service

Another key takeaway, was how big the opportunity in China is for Australian business – whilst this probably only reinforced what we already knew, the presentation by Liu Bing from AUSTRADE was a good reminder.

With no disrespect to some of the presenters it seemed like there was a lot of duplication in many of the presentations. On a positive note however, the messages that were being conveyed were relatively consistent:

eCommerce customers want:

• Flexible delivery options
• Free shipping and an
• Easy returns process

And in order to meet these requirements online retailers fundamentally only need two things:

1. An order fulfillment system that is capable of providing a consolidated view of inventory in all locations
2. An order fulfillment system driven by algorithms that can determine the optimal location from which to fulfill an order – in the omni channel world optimal is based on the location of inventory in relation to the customer , the customers delivery requirements and the cost to meet these requirements

Once the optimal location is determined the transport infrastructure and offerings ares already in place to support the customer expectations.

Overall the organizers – Akloade did a pretty good job of providing a diverse group of presenters, a wide variety of exhibitors and attracting a good mix of high quality delegates.

On the negative side – there were quite a number of changes to the program and the advertised speakers which were not really communicated that well.

To review the full program from the conference – Click Here

For those that are interested the 4th Annual Online Retail Supply Chain Conference will be held on 28th February to the 1st March 2017