The COVID-19 pandemic has been a struggle for most retailers that always relied heavily on their storefronts, and the numbers have dictated that with total sales plunging 16.4 percent in April. But many midsize and multinational retail clients of one supply chain platform are showing that not everyone is feeling the doom and gloom.
Tecsys, a global provider of supply chain management and omnichannel commerce software solutions, revealed that its April processing volumes jumped tenfold over the same period last year, doubling peak order volumes reached on Black Friday last year.
According to Laurie McGrath, the company’s chief marketing officer, one of Tecsys’ multinational brands already surpassed its 2019 transaction volume by 25 percent even though it is only May.
How is the tech provider bringing such success to its retail partners? By working with them to help expand fulfillment options and leverage their stores as fulfillment centers even if they are closed, according to Steven Berkovitz, chief platform officer at Tecsys, a SaaS retail order management software that powers multi-channel and omnichannel commerce for some of the world’s most preeminent brands, including transnational apparel and accessory brands.
The platform is designed to enable seamless transaction capture, processing and distribution across digital and in-store channels, giving retailers a single provider for end-to-end distribution management functionality capable of routing complex order management combinations.
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“As logistics providers face shipment delays and logjams, our retailers can massively scale their online business, pivot to curbside or ship-from-store, and they can do it without missing a beat for their customers,” Berkovitz said.
Retailers offering multiple convenient fulfillment options like contactless curbside pickup have a clear competitive advantage over those that might be facing disruption in their only fulfillment channel. When experiencing bottlenecks in their order and distribution routing, omnichannel retailers are better equipped to adapt to customer demand and buying patterns. And with 29 percent of shoppers saying they don’t know if they will be ever as comfortable entering a store as they were before the coronavirus outbreak, according to a survey from Fast, it’s a safe bet that implementing curbside pickup and ship-from-store capabilities are going to be major sells for companies looking to get the most out of their stores for shoppers who still won’t shop in one.
“The technology stack that powers today’s modern retail distribution is at the epicenter of a thriving omnichannel operation,” says Peter Brereton, president and chief executive officer at Tecsys. “We are systematically demonstrating that the combination of a flexible cloud-native retail software and the robustness of an end-to-end supply chain partner with deep ties to high-volume warehouse operations is an indispensable value-add in times of channel growth.”