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Kuebix - Amazon Prime Day

Amazon Prime Day’s Impact on the Supply Chain

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Amazon Prime Day kicks off today at 3:00 PM EST and is one of the biggest e-commerce days of the year, with sales growing over 60 percent year-over-year since 2016. Prime Day features deep discounts for Amazon Prime members and will generate sales to rival those of the holiday season, even during one of the year’s lowest sales periods. Retailers supplying the 560M+ items available every day on Amazon in the USA are upping their game with the help of technology to meet expectations for quick deliveries and excellent service by optimizing their shipments and improving visibility.

Amazon Prime Day is like Black Friday, only in July, and demonstrates how consumers’ adoption of e-commerce shopping is growing at a pace that far exceeds expectations. E-tailers shipping into Amazon fulfillment distribution centers (FDCs) are focusing on improving efficiencies within their supply chains and streamlining operations to keep pace with the increased volume. By leveraging the power of technology, retailers are lowering transportation costs, finding needed capacity, and gaining visibility into operations to ensure customer service expectations are met.

Prime Day comes at a time of year that has been traditionally slow for the supply chain industry. There aren’t any major holidays, and back-to-school hasn’t quite started. However, the popularity of the event coupled with the capacity crisis and driver shortage are causing roadblocks for some retailers who haven’t already optimized their supply chains. To keep up with the heightened order volume, retailers must streamline internal processes, ship products more efficiently and maintain a heightened level of visibility to order line items.

Retailers are turning to technology to improve their internal processes through order integration, rate-comparison and freight pay and audit features. Global logistics communities are uniting carriers and shippers to find optimal routes to share assets and fill empty miles. Powerful optimization tools are consolidating loads and planning the most efficient routes to cut down on transit time as well as costs. All these processes are being made possible by technology and are helping to combat the capacity crunch by making shipping more efficient and utilizing assets to their fullest.

Amazon has set the bar high in terms of order visibility. Companies are now taking advantage of technology to gain visibility into their supply chains, resulting in superior customer service and more efficient operations. The adoption of technology like tracking devices, on-board computers, and cloud-based portals means that retailers can collaborate with carriers to improve performance. Carriers can provide an updated status of their delivery so that retailers know where goods are at all times and when to expect their arrival. If a delay is going to happen, the customer can be alerted, which improves satisfaction.

The industry is braced for “Christmas in July” as the countdown to Prime Day draws to a close. The deep discounts on more than one million items, both Amazon-branded products as well as items from third-party sellers, are guaranteed to have a large impact on the supply chain this year. In order to keep up with increased order volume and inventory turns, shippers are turning to technology to improve their processes and speed up delivery.

Don’t Let Your 4th of July Holiday Fizzle Out

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Happy Birthday America! The Fourth of July holiday celebrates the birthday of the United States of America, but no one ever stops to think how this holiday gets pulled together. There is food – hot dogs, hamburgers, watermelon, etc. – and of course, fireworks – that must arrive from suppliers to retail outlets or consumers’ homes at the right time.

The National Retail Federation predicts that Americans will spend $6.9 billion on food over the 4th of July holiday. Other results from the NRF survey include:

  • 9 out of 10 adults will celebrate the Fourth of July
  • 31 million will be traveling
  • 27% of people plan to purchase patriotic merchandise
  • 62% of people are planning a cookout or picnic
  • 61+ million cases of domestic beer will be drunk
  • $325 million will be spent on fireworks in the US

For supply chain managers, the 4th of July holiday consists of a lot of variables that add complexities to supply chains. These include regional tastes, weather conditions, traffic patterns and local regulations that increase demand variability, making transporting the 4th of July goods on time to the right location quite hard to coordinate without the use of technology.

With the increase in shipments needed to get 4th of July merchandise, food and fireworks to retailers’ shelves, the decrease in capacity and lack of truck drivers to carry loads could potentially fizzle out any supply chain. Hopefully you planned early and can be flexible. Using a transportation management system (TMS) that collects data from across the supply chain and generates reports that help management make better, more informed decisions, can help you plan for seasonality within your operations.

A TMS that has thousands of carriers connected in a global network, or that allows you to access the spot market, can help you find the capacity you need, quickly and easily. A TMS that manages inbound freight can speed operations at the dock, helping distributors improve their operations and maximize efficiency.

With technology like Kuebix TMS managing your freight, your 4th of July with be the best celebration of the year.

Kuebix Earth Day Sustainability

Meet Sustainability Goals with the Help of a TMS

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U.S. Senator Gaylord Wilson, from Wisconsin, witnessed the effects of a massive oil spill along the California coast in 1969, motivating him to bring attention to the environment. He established the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. It was wildly popular, sparking national interest, so popular that Congress established the US Environmental Protection Agency and passed the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act that same year.

Since Earth Day began, it has expanded globally to over 192 countries – all working together to raise awareness for sustainability and protection of the Earth. The 50th Anniversary of Earth Day will take place two years from now on April 22, 2020. Click this link to be a part of the Earth Day Network’s mission to broaden, diversify, and mobilize the international environmental movement.

Logistics is at the heart of the U.S. economy, without shipping our country would come to a standstill. The majority of American businesses rely heavily on an enormous amount of diesel fuel each year. According to the ATA (American Trucking Associations)

Fuel Consumption –

·     3 billion gallons of fuel consumed by those trucks used for business purposes in 2016

          ·     8 billion gallons of diesel fuel

          ·     5 billion gallons of gasoline

·     The trucking industry spent $105.2 billion buying diesel fuel in 2015

·     Diesel fuel is often the second highest expense for motor carriers after labor and can be as much as 20% of total operating costs.

Not only is fuel an expensive commodity for companies to purchase, it also has huge implications for the environment. Shippers can have a real impact on CO2 emissions by reducing the amount of fuel they consume. One of the easiest ways for companies to achieve this is to ensure that their trucks are always as full as possible, and their delivery routes are optimized.

Kuebix is helping shippers meet their sustainability goals by facilitating the consolidation of LTL shipments into FTLs when possible. SupplierMAX, Kuebix’s program for streamlining inbound operations, helps shippers standardize a set of carriers to enable loads to be consolidated as a regular practice. An excessive number of inbound deliveries leads to higher emissions, greater idling times and increased unloading costs. Fewer trucks on the road means a decrease in fuel consumption and overall lower costs. It’s a win for suppliers, shippers and the environment!

Shippers can do their part to improve air quality by reducing the number of trucks they have on the road. A robust transportation management system like Kuebix TMS helps to facilitate the creation of an optimized transportation strategy. To honor Earth Day 2018, any shipper can begin to meet their sustainability goals by improving their supply chain efficiency with the help of Kuebix TMS.

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