Are your retail operations efficient?

A retail transaction occurs when a business sells a product or service to the public, or an individual consumer. The transaction itself may occur online or in person, and through cash or credit card.

Logistics in retail involves five critical functions:

1. Inventory: having enough stock available to meet consumer demands. 
2. Storage: controlling freshness and quality while staging merchandise to meet demand.
3. Transportation: getting merchandise from inventory to stores and consumers when needed. 
4. Packaging: ensuring merchandise is attractively and securely packaged, in a manner that is easy to handle and cost-effective.
5. Communication: tracking deliveries and keeping consumers informed.

Reverse logistics is the management of retail returns and excess merchandise and the refurbishing or disposal of the goods.

Logistics is a large cost for retail and plays a big role in customer satisfaction.  With retail rapidly changing to e-commerce logistics costs can be anywhere between 5% to 15% of sales. If goods are not available or delivered intact and when expect them consumer satisfaction suffers.