Skip to main content

E-commerce Companies & Logistics Management

There are lots of articles available online for studying the details of how the logistics of any e-commerce company work. I won’t share a specific logistics management process of Flipkart but yes, the following process is almost same with what Flipkart follows in their logistics division.
So nowadays e-commerce companies maintain their own firm to fulfill requirements of customers. Flipkart has WS Retail for the same. Apart from this, they have independent sellers who provide products. Now for any e-commerce firm, there could be two processes to fulfill the customer order and which are:
  1. Seller - pickup hub - mother hub - delivery hub - Customer
  2. Fulfillment centres - mother hub - delivery hub - Customer
Now, when a customer orders something on the site then the seller gets the order on the web kiosk being maintained between seller and e-commerce firm. Once, the seller accepts the order for delivery, he/she clicks web kiosk for acknowledgement of the same. In order to maintain a proper process for processing orders, e-commerce firms set some time from which they calculate time given to the seller to ship the product. In this case, we’ll consider it as 11 AM that if a seller gets the order before 11 AM then he/she has to ship the order within next two days. In another case, if a seller gets order after 11 AM then he/she has to ship the order in next three days because the count of that day would get nullified. One all this happens, the seller will prepare the order accordingly for shipping to pick up hub. Now for the shipment of product from seller’s location to pickup could happen in two ways:
  1. Logistics firm owned by e-commerce itself (for example, e-kart of Flipkart)
  2. Third party logistics (3PL) firm
Now assuming that logistics firm is being owned by e-commerce firm itself so product movement would happen with the help of that firm (name it as XYZ). Once, the products reach pickup hub, there sorting would happen in following terms:
  1. Next day delivery/Same day delivery
  2. Local delivery
  3. Zonal delivery
  4. National normal delivery
  5. National express delivery
Sellers are two types:
  1. Normal Sellers who provide only 20% of the products. (They generally use bikes)
  2. Golden/Express Sellers who provide 80% of the products. (They use vans)
Sorting at pickup generally happens with the help of barcode scanning (generally). From pickup hub, products get shipped to mother hub and further sorting happens there. As mentioned earlier, there are two processes to deliver product to a customer, so at the mother hub, fulfillment centres are attached (which are basically for maintaining inventory and are generally being taken care by e-commerce owned seller firms like WS Retail of Flipkart). From mother hub, the process is same for both the processes.
Sorting at mother hub happens in two ways:
  1. Primary sorting
  2. Secondary sorting
From mother hubs, products are shipped to delivery hubs where sorting happens pin code wise. And from there on, deliveries are being made. Now delivery time being given to customers is based on this whole process. I have explained where the generic process which is almost same in all e-commerce firms in one or the other way. Take the example of Seller, he/she is taking two days to ship the product, then pick up & mother hub will take another two days to process the order and then delivery hub one more day to ship the product means: Total delivery time = 2+2+1+delay allowance, so consider one day more Therefore, Total delivery time = 2+2+1+1 = 6 days to deliver ABC product to customer. This process looks very simple the way I have written, but in reality, it’s very complex. A lot of factors and issues are being ignored while writing this process. It’s totally based on what generally e-commerce firms follow to manage their logistics processes.

 For further reading:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Good parenting & development of cognitive skills in teenagers

These days the real communication between parents and teens has been lost due to technological advancements which are increasing the gap between generations exponentially. The impact of such things can be seen in children at their early development stages. Slow personality development, negative attitude, stressed atmosphere, poor cognitive skills, and hence bad overall confidence to face the world. Parenting is one of the biggest contributors in engaging all the personality and growth related elements of teens these days. Moreover, only parents could comprehend the requirements of teens and give required time for them to discuss their daily challenges, accomplishment, and learning so that it can help teens improve their conversational and relational abilities. Improvement of cognitive skills depends hugely on an interaction of parents with children regularly. Games, pattern building exercises, to infuse curiosity and creativity through experience, and interest building learni...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dance to Love: Part 5

GOOD-BYE! Sahaj was from a bourgeois family. His father was a technician in a private firm and an alcoholic. He was never like that, but money and responsibility put him into such condition and made him totally irresponsible against the family, he once loved the most. From the meager income he earned daily, major portion was for his daily enjoyment. He was always ignorant to Sahaj and his younger brother. His mother was very hard working and she always handled the intricacies of life with all the big heart. Sahaj was very close to her mother. Because of the conditions at home, he was very responsible, caring and hard working. Sahaj studied very hard for two years to get into the engineering college. And he was very happy with all the proud moments he had brought to her mother after he got the admission. His job was another happy moment for his family and his mother was very proud.             Akuti was from a very good earning family ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Rejections are Important!

Rejections are part of every individual's life in this world. Be it from life, society, family, friends, office, colleges, business etc., they always hurt. We have a lot of examples of personalities who started with a lot of rejections but ended with awesomely successful life. These days, to cope up with a stress of any rejection is in itself a difficult exercise. Most difficult phase is for students when they face rejections from their most aspired universities all around the world. There could be a lot of reasons behind that, but individuals start to blame themselves for not writing a good statement of purpose or cover letters. But really, is it a matter of concern when we see life as a cycle of success and failures? It's not at all easy to explain your life in mere 500 to 1000 words because world and life are more than college admissions any days and this is not the end of the world. Moreover, human values have no relation with colleges and what they teach to students....
2 comments
Read more