The American parcels delivery giant United Parcel Service (UPS) is not leaving the e-commerce field to the Chinese express companies or carriers. They recently decided to roll out new technology to gear themselves better towards serving their clients in the future.
A new in-house company to be formed
In order to get things going, UPS has decided to form a new in-house company which will be named ‘Ware2Go.’
The aim is to create a new digital platform and technology set-up which can compare warehouse space available as well as other services in order to give customers a far better service by
fulfilling online orders faster and more efficiently. This, UPS says, will give its numerous smaller and mid-size customers a better e-commerce leverage for supply of goods.
Costs not revealed
Although the U.S. parcels giant has not revealed how much they intend to invest in the new platform, it is clear that they are taking a closer look at their present warehouse monitoring systems
and have convinced themselves that if they wish to also become a leading e-commerce player, then new technology and systems efficiencies will have to be introduced quite quickly.
Scott Price, Chief Transformation and Strategy Officer at UPS in a statement was quoted in the U.S. trade magazine, Logistics Management that “Ware2Go uses innovative online technology to match
excess warehouse and fulfillment capacity with merchant demand to provide transparent inventory, order fulfillment and final delivery.” He added that “We’re solving for two major problems: speed
to market and efficient warehousing.
Efficient supply chain key to e-commerce success
The large integrators such as UPS, DHL and FedEx have woken up to the need to look at their operational supply chain in order to gear themselves to the massive e-commerce traffic which has
started to move across the globe and which is expected to be the dominating product for air cargo in the not too distant future.
They all have modern and efficient fleets of aircraft and are busy adding new and converted freighters into their inventory in order to gear up for the e-commerce scene. However, they, as well as
most freighter carriers around the world, are continually being faced with the problems of how to gear the ground handling aspect so as to ensure a very fast, efficient and cost productive supply
chain.
It starts on the ground and ends on the ground! It’s that simple, but also not. Most large airports don’t have enough space to cater for a seamless e-commerce traffic flow and are being forced to
rethink their operational effectiveness if they are to play a role in the future.
China looks at it differently. They just build new cargo related airports and turn them into future express handling giants. UPS with their new move are in the first instance looking at their
small and medium sized customers who in their words cannot finance an own distribution centre. UPS is working closely with U.S.-based BCG Digital ventures on running their ‘Ware2Go’ platform and
hope that many present and future potential clients will join in.
John Mc Donagh
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