One company which has looked very carefully at integrating the logistics of its online business with its bricks-and-mortar operations is electronics retailer Strathfield.
Michael Glezerson is manager of Strathfield Direct, which covers the company's call centres, direct fulfilment, Web sites, and basically anything which doesn't go through the stores.
Orders are received from customers and then verified. Strathfield then uses its own internal controls to check to make sure that it's a genuine order, and a genuine payment. Sometimes staff will also phone the customer if there's anything which needs to be checked. This is all handled through an e-commerce database at the back end of the Web site, which has an administration engine behind it.
Once the customer details have been verified, Strathfield has a number of ways of fulfilling the order. If products are in a store, the company can directly fulfil the order from there. Otherwise the product gets it shipped from the relevant supplier, or Strathfield's warehouse.
The company has been selling through its Web site for two and a half years. It purchased Ozbuy in June last year, then integrated and rebuilt it as www.strathfield.com. Currently the site lists more than 40,000 products over and above what is offered in the stores, such as notebooks, printer cartridges, and PDAs.
The tricky part, Glezerson says, is making sure the back end is set up in a way that allows it to easily fulfil its customers. It hasn't been without hiccups along the way. For example, in Christmas 1999 Strathfield Direct was delivering products two or three days late, because of its couriers being overburdened with deliveries. Glezerson says this has now been streamlined by having additional stock on hand at its warehouse and all ran smoothly last Christmas.
The site also includes an order tracking system which allows customers to go in and see whether a product has been ordered, shipped, and the expected time of arrival. "[We're also] working with a large courier company to integrate into our system to allow full tracking and assignment number door-to-door tracking-that's in the corporate space," he says.
Glezerson started out in what he describes as the grassroots of the industry. "You can have the most sexy Web site, but if you can't get the logistics right you can't get the business right. It's all about getting the customer the product."
