Locus Robotics - The State of eCommerce 2023

Navigating Ecommerce Challenges with Robotics

By Kait Peterson, Senior Director, Product Marketing, Locus Robotics

Online sales rose in popularity during the pandemic, causing retailers to realize that their operations needed to be flexible and scalable at a moment’s notice. The sudden shift from in-store to online shopping as a result of the ecommerce boom caused order volume to grow at historic levels. This has greatly accelerated existing omni-channel retail trends, such as BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store), curbside-pickup, and home delivery. But ecommerce retailers didn’t have the associates nor the technology to keep up.

Shopping online hasn’t decreased as shoppers return to stores. Instead, during the peak holiday shopping season in 2022, global online sales hit a record $281 billion according to Salesforce.com and Adobe Analytics Data. For the US only, the online sales were over $68 billion, representing a 9% increase over 2021.

Today, labor remains the top challenge for ecommerce retailers in a variety of formats – including labor availability, absenteeism from cold and flu season, and high turnover rates. Working in a warehouse can be physically taxing on warehouse associates who have to push heavy carts, lift heavy items, and typically walk 10-12 miles per day.

The second biggest challenge is the unpredictable nature of what’s coming in and leaving the ecommerce warehouse. Containers are finally off the ships stuck at coastal ports. Products are now flowing through the ports and ending up in trailers or containers outside of warehouses. Many logistics warehouses don’t have the capacity to bring in that inventory, making demand planning a lost cause.

Fulfillment center automation isn’t a wishlist item that might be nice to have for the future. Instead, it’s something that ecommerce fulfillment centers need now and the smart ones are making the move today.

The third challenge is the current economic uncertainty. People are concerned, so they’re holding off on certain expenditures, while trying to eke a little bit more out of their current CapEx models rather than trying to sign up for new things like warehouse automation. They know that they need to automate, but they’re not sure what type they need.

Successful retailers are ones that focus on enhancing the customer experience through ease for the customer and a strong supply chain. Customers want to receive their products correctly and quickly while also having the ability to send returns back without hassle. In the supply chain, successful retailers will need a diverse strategy of ways to provide goods to customers, be it through in-store, micro-fulfillment centers (MFCs), or large distribution centers. It’s all about getting the right product to the right place at the right time, and warehouses play a strong part in that.

The biggest way that fulfillment centers can get past their top challenges is to look at warehouse automation solutions like autonomous mobile robots that are flexible, scalable, and safe. AMRs improve retail order fulfillment in three ways:

Speed: Double and triple order fulfillment volumes without increasing labor or space
Productivity: Increase the amount of work each associate is physically able to do and reduce cycle times
Profitability: Complete work and track metrics and report insights that grow the operation

Smart fulfillment centers use automation and AMRs to create an environment that can handle the volume of peak season as well as their regular order volumes without overpaying. A vendor that offers a Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) subscription model provides fulfillment centers with the ability to add and subtract robots as needed to work alongside human associates.

Fulfillment center automation isn’t a wishlist item that might be nice to have for the future. Instead, it’s something that ecommerce fulfillment centers need now and the smart ones are making the move today.

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