A New Class of Distributed Order Management Solutions
The revolution Amazon Mechanical Turk (MT) and Task Rabbit started, Shopify and Square are continuing. Amazon patented MT in 2001 as a way to build "artificial artificial intelligence" - in other words, humans! (yet another industry Amazon invented - I lose count how many...)
In 2008, TaskRabbit evolved the model by allowing you to ask someone through an app to get you a hot fudge sundae across town and bring it back to your house from the local Dairy Queen. But you had to go to a separate app to make it happen.
The evolution of all this is local delivery apps, which before now was distinct from your eCommerce business, and most popular for restaurants. No more.
Recently I got a Postmates delivery from a neighborhood Shopify merchant where I could schedule a date-specific delivery, all part of Shopify's checkout. In specific verticals requiring date-definite delivery, this has been happening for a while, but now it seems to be mainstreaming.
Yes, I could have just had them ship it - and I had that option, but doesn't that seem a lot more wasteful than just giving it to someone local on a bike? Shopify recently updated their local delivery options, and I am eager to see how this evolves. They are pushing the model to be COVID-responsive, or maybe even COVID-proactive, and continue to stay relevant even beyond COVID-specific commerce needs.
I love this eCommerce direction and predict it will create a WHOLE NEW class of distributed order management software to deal with all the new inventory and supply chain innovations also happening.
“Seeing how incredibly successful Buy Online Pick Up in Store worked for Big Box, bringing the same concept of local pickup/delivery to SMBs is going to unlock massive new growth potential.” Jeremy Horowitz, I couldn’t agree more!
Miles Thomas weighed in with how some BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick Up In Store) practices have been working in the UK: “One of eBay's innovations in the UK was to tie up with counter service general merchandise retailer Argos to allow UK eBay sellers to do BOPIS in Argos stores…Some UK 2nd tier parcel carriers also offer BOPIS at convenience stores…and one has a limited locker network…Some of the UK Tier 2 parcel companies have been offering date/time slotted delivery option for some time, either in checkout flow or as a post dispatch interaction.”
John McClymont added “I believe the real 'fuel' behind people looking for same day delivery options is more about the certainty of when they will get the delivery vs actually needing something that fast. When the systems make date and delivery time (tight 90 to 120 minute window) selection mainstream, I believe it will be the default shipping preference over same day speed.”
I love the idea of date-specific shipments. I think Amazon will get there too. As a customer, I want this functionality, and I am eager to see how this will move the needle on post-checkout fulfillment flexibility.
