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Q-Commerce is an abbreviation for Quick Commerce. It simply means quicker delivery timelines for purchases made online. The idea of ‘quicker’ here is to deliver an order within an hour of placing it. By that measure, shadows of quick commerce are already in existence. Imagine a local grocery shop fulfilling on-demand local orders using common digital technologies like messenger apps and online payment platforms and local delivery services. However, Q-Commerce is a well-planned and streamlined business model. So, casual deliveries taking place within an hour does not count as quick commerce. We will discuss the implementation of quick commerce later in this post.

An interesting and fundamental feature of quick commerce is that it is limited to fewer and readily available products per order. For example, through quick commerce, it will be possible to deliver multiple different electronic items in one order. But under normal circumstances, it will not be possible to fulfil an order that comprises the monthly grocery needs of a household. The reason is the limited timeframe. The fulfilment process in quick commerce does not allow the time required to sort and assemble a wide variety of products in one order. But with analytics and personalization, it may become possible to offer multiple products in one package. This would then fulfil the conditions of fewness and readiness of availability of quick commerce.

Impact on eCommerce players

Quick commerce has notched up the competition in the eCommerce industry to the next level. It will become increasingly difficult for regular eCommerce players to compete with businesses following the quick commerce model. For example, giant eCommerce marketplaces and online retailers already lose out to local grocery and departmental stores when it comes to household groceries and provisions. In such a scenario, dark stores going the quick commerce route will offer strong competition to all routine online and offline stores operating within the same market.

Impact on brick and mortar retail

Running a quick commerce business model entails the presence of multiple numbers of local hubs and fulfilment centres. Existing offline retail businesses with multiple stores already have an edge in adopting quick commerce. They already possess the necessary infrastructure. Even if such businesses are still in the brick and mortar format, quick commerce offers them another strong reason to go online.

Impact on customers

For customers living in metropolitan cities, getting deliveries within hours will not be something alien to them. They might not feel the difference as strongly as customers who usually have to wait for days to get their orders delivered. But with the product selection constraints with quick commerce, customers will benefit only in a few selected product categories. The core advantage of quick commerce is that of time and urgency.

Implementing Quick Commerce

Multiple local order fulfilment centres

Quick commerce runs with the notion of hyperlocal delivery. There are only 30 minutes available to process and deliver an order. These local hubs must be strategically located with dedicated areas to be covered. A good example of this would be pizza restaurants that promise delivery within 30 minutes. They do not achieve this with drones (at least not yet). They open more and more stores in different locations within a city. Making the pizza takes the same time but it shortens the delivery time. The same is true for quick commerce.

Delivery team on standby

Remember the delivery promise is 30 minutes. So, the burden of not having a delivery guy ready to deliver the order falls on the house. But how big a delivery team should be is a tricky question to answer. Also, it needs to be figured out whether the delivery team needs to be in-house, outsourced, or commission-based associates. It depends on the costing. But dependability is also a serious consideration here because service quality is involved.

Defining orders and product selection

Not all kinds of orders could be processed with quick commerce. A pack of cornflakes can be delivered within 30 minutes. But it is extremely unlikely to fulfil an order comprising of 30 items. The sorting and assembling that many items would take up too much time. For instance, a restaurant would be able to prepare only a certain number of parathas (a type of Indian bread) within a given time. This is keeping in mind that the order must be delivered within 30 minutes.

Fast platform

Customers are into quick commerce for a reason. It is to save time or to meet an urgent need. And thus, it requires that the ordering platform provided to them meets the specific requirements of their shopping journey. A simple instance of this would be the ‘lite’ versions of many famous mobile applications and games. The lite versions remove all the fanciness from the apps and make them usable even on low-end phones. Slow internet? No problem. Low RAM? No problem. In quick commerce, businesses should think on these lines. And those ads and offer banners need to go down as well.

Robust QA and QC

In quick commerce, after an order is placed, there is barely any time for quality checking. Therefore, all the elaborate product-related QA and QC activities must be carried out much before that. This is because the products may still suffer from deviations from the expected standards. Customers may still ask for a return or replacement as applicable.

Operational Planning: SOPs

Sound operational planning has heightened importance in quick commerce. Here, employees do not have any time to take calls or make decisions but simply process orders. The flow of activities needs to be short and limited to fewer hands. But even in this rush, the adherence to standards cannot be violated. The procedures have to be shortened but the standards cannot be compromised. What will be the point of sending the right order within 30 minutes to the wrong door or vice versa?

How YRC can help

We are a boutique retail and eCommerce consulting firm with a growing international presence. Since 2012, we have consulted over 500 clients in more than 20 verticals. We deploy an expert and experienced team of professionals from diversified academic and industry exposure in our projects.

Our services stand aligned with the requirements of going omnichannel and adopting quick commerce. From market research and business model development to SOP design and franchise consulting, our experience and expertise are best suited for businesses that seek a sustainable and growth-oriented transformation in the ever-changing eCommerce landscape.

To know more about our quick commerce business consulting services or if you have any queries for our quick commerce business consultants, drop us a message to schedule a callback.

 

PROCESS AUTOMATION

The idea of having Ecommerce Consultants on-board from the beginning itself points towards reducing the involvement of the promoters in daily operations. Ecommerce Businesses willing to be a brand reaping profits & sustaining the competition must ensure that most of their processes should be automated. The more the manual intervention, the more would be the errors.

In Ecommerce business, you get only 1 chance to impress the customer & if you mess up there, you lose the customer for long.

Process automation in respect to all the activities pertaining to customers from order receiving to order fulfilment is a must for a seamless experience for the customers.

Task Management is another grey area where most deadlines fail as 90% of the tasks are assigned manually & are forgotten, unheard, misunderstood or mistaken.

YRC Team of Ecommerce Management Consultants helps to make maximum of the processes system-driven to ensure minimalistic manual intervention.

VIDEOGRAPHY & PHOTOGRAPHY

No matter how good your product is, the customer would know only if it looks good.

Photography includes the following steps:

  • Cataloguing your products
  • Cataloguing your images
  • Backup your images (A few cloud storage solutions include Dropbox, Google Drive, Bitcasa, Apple’s Cloud Storage etc.)
  • Choose the right camera & lens (You may also outsource the photography to a third party agency)

DIGITAL MARKETING

Digital Marketing includes SEO & SMM. SEO i.e. Search Engine Optimization includes activities like back-linking, meta tags, blog-writing etc. to ensure your website ranks on the 1st page on Google Search.

Next comes SMM i.e. “Social Media Marketing” which as the name suggests including promoting your products on all the social media sites, email marketing, influencer marketing & several other BTL activities.

These activities are going to be recurring & would decide the traffic on the website, the conversions, whether the right target market is tapped, the likes, the views, the orders, the reviews & much more. YRCs Ecommerce Consultants create a budget for digital marketing right from pre-launch to launch & for each month thereafter.

Building digital marketing strategies in coordination with the agency, selecting them to signing them off would be the role of YRC.

This ensures seamless coordination, detailed interactions & desired execution as it is always advisable to work with a single agency than multiple of them.

IT INTEGRATION

Selection of the right software for smooth functioning of back-end operations right from production to webstore display would be suggested and integrated by YRC Team.

YRC’s Team defines SOPs of Product Movement, maps it with the locations & people. They then create a blueprint of all the features required in the software & help in shortlisting & selection.

IT Integration involves connecting your offline inventories with real-time online webstore so when a sale occurs, inventories get deducted real time across offline as well as online platforms.

This helps in accurate inventory management, maintaining the MOQs, re-order levels & achieving the optimum inventory levels.

Some popular software include unicommerce, viniculum for your front-end website management & Genisys for your entire back-end Purchase, Production, Accounting, Invoicing etc. management.

WAREHOUSE & LOGISTICS PLANNING

  • How many cities or countries you wish to sell in?
  • Where should your Warehouse be located?
  • Should you have one warehouse in each country or city?
  • Should you be having your own delivery team in your base city?
  • Would the 3rd party vendors be reliable? What happens when they lose or misplace your product during delivery?
  • How should I manage the logistics if my goods are coming from different countries?
  • How should the goods be stored and barcoded?
  • How much space do I require for warehouse?
  • I am sure several such questions must be haunting you while you think of starting your own fashion ecommerce brand.

 

At YRC, our warehousing and logistics experts can help you devise a strategy for all of the above mentioned queries and much more.

We design the layout of the Warehouse considering the inward, goods processing, software entry, barcoding, outward, goods return, scrap storage, goods stacking & much more.

Logistics route plan is devised considering the manufacturer to your warehouse and from there to last mile delivery locations.

UI & UX DESIGNING

This Step involves 03 distinct parts:

Part 1: Choosing the right Platform:

From several platforms available in the market right from Shopify to magento, woocommerce, prestoshop, wordpress etc. you must choose the one that fits best for your business

Part 2: UX Designing:

“UX” denotes User Experience, which if put in simple language is building the functional requirements of the website.

UX Designing includes designing the features required in the website, customer journey map, website features, the browsing features, navigation features, ecommerce order management process flow, checkout cart features, catalogue management, ecommerce payment system, cross selling features & much more.

“As per statistics, 68% of the customers abandon the carts before payment”

An interesting UX ensures the customer sticks on to the website for a longer time.

Part 3: UI Designing:

UI stands for User Interface, which means designing the look and feel of the website. UI includes using the right colours, elements and the entire aesthetics of the website.

A good User Interface ensures the user completes the task that he has come for. It navigates the user through the journey of the brand in the simplest but most effective way.

The UX designer maps out the bare bones of the user journey; the UI designer then fills it in with visual and interactive elements.

If User experience is the bare bone, user interface wraps it up with an attractive cape.

At YRC, our team if experts can help you develop the entire User Journey to ensure it is engaging!

SAMPLING & PRODUCTION

This step follows the “Designing” Phase, whether you have an in-house design team, freelance designers or an outsourced design company. It is one of the most exciting phases, as here you see your designs turning into products & your ideas turning into reality.

In most start-up cases, production is outsourced i.e. brands tie-up with the established manufacturers/ job-workers to get their products manufactured.

Sampling involves multiple 04 Stages, Fit-Sample, Prototype Sample, Pre-Production Sample & the Production Sample.

Prototype Sample is the first sample provided to the buyer. It can be in any fabric/ colour. This sample is just to understand whether the product design looks equally great in reality.

Fit Sample, as the name suggests is prepared to check the fit of the garment i.e. the various sizes, length, width etc.

Pre-production is made by the actual production line. Here the stitching quality and other aspects related to manufacturing are checked. This is the last stage where rejection can be accepted.

Production Sample is made before the production which is the replica of what is going to be finally produced.

Once you are through with all this, you are good to go ahead & get your goods manufactured.

PRODUCT DESIGNING / SOURCING

Product Designing or Sourcing is the heart of the Ecommerce Fashion Brand.

Product Designing / Sourcing can be done in several ways, as follows:

  • In-house Design Team
  • Freelance Designers
  • Outsourced Design Team
  • Ready Product Sourcing (From Manufacturer or Wholesaler)

At YRC, we evaluate your business strategy & business model to arrive at the decision, which of the above ways would be best-fit for your business. In certain cases, product sourcing may be a combination of the above.

These are the people who are going to build your brand! Whether they are the designers or merchandiser, your brand look is going to be in their hands.

If you are designing each garment from the scratch, the sourcing would play crucial role in developing design identity of your brand.

Sourcing includes fabric, trims, lining & all the raw material required to build the garment.

BRANDING

Branding is the “Look of the Brand”, right from logo to tagline, the colours used, the brand story, the brand communications on social media, the packaging & all the other aspects which speak directly or indirectly to the customers. Branding constitutes the look & feel of the brand & hence must be thoughtfully planned to match with the product that we are selling.

Branding must appeal to our target audience. Example : A golden colour logo depicting finesse, art, richness, premium, however beautiful it may be individually cannot go with a brand selling affordable kids wear products. So, your logo must be in-line with your brand positioning, whether you are an expensive brand or a luxury brand or a value for money brand, it must be depicted from your “Branding”.

It is an integral part to attract the target audience.

ORGANOGRAMS & SOP’s

Organogram is the “HR Blueprint” of the business which is created at the onset, to map out the team required across each function at various stages of the business. At the launch, only key people need to be got on board to ensure the project gets started & at this stage, all of them need to multi-task. Similarly, certain financial as well as operational goals are set for addition of the further team. Example, for the operations team, we hire 1 operations manager during the pre-launch phase & we add 1 more only when the business kicks-off & we reach a volume of selling more than 1000 pcs/ month or a turnover of more than 0.1 million USD.

SOPs are Standard Operating Procedures, a bible to run the entire organization right from Sales, Purchase, HR, Order receiving to Order fulfilment, Inventory Management, Accounts, Warehouse, Logistics, Supply Chain, Production & all the other relevant functions for the business. Business must be organized from its first day of operations; only then the tasks can be delegated.

At YRC, we design the organization structure, the processes, and approximate time taken to execute each process, job profile of every member within the organization, their KRAs, KPIs & the Reporting Structure.

CRITICAL PATHWAY

Critical Pathway Analysis (CPA), is a project management technique which cannot be overlooked while launching an ecommerce fashion brand. Brand launch process is cumbersome with multiple inter-dependent & time-bound tasks involved, which need to be tracked to ensure the project remains on track.

CPA outlines key tasks across the project, their turnaround time (TAT) & the dependencies of tasks upon each other. It identifies the sequence of tasks, their interdependent steps from inception to completion, their criticalities, and their dates of onset, target dates of completion along with the key responsible person for the respective activities. Critical Pathway helps in understanding the unimportant & not urgent tasks which may jeopardize the execution of the project because of an unexpected snag! It also maps out the potential bottlenecks which might be posed because of the dependencies of tasks upon each other & cases where the next task cannot be commenced before the completion of the previous one.

CPA detects the minimum & the maximum time involvement of a particular individual or team to execute the task, thereby arriving at the overall deadlines associated with the project.

At Your Retail Coach, we design the Critical Pathway & review it periodically to ensure the project is on track & the progress is measurable.

BUSINESS STRATEGY & BUSINESS PLAN

Business Strategy includes the vision, mission, goals, business model, business plan & strategy for all the functions within the organization.

Business Strategy is a well-defined plan that outlines who, what, where, why, how & when for the company; for example, who would be the target market, how to attract the target audience, when to launch new products, where to operate from, how to handle competitors, what would be the USP, what would be long term goal of the organization & several other answers to the 5Ws of Strategy.

Business Strategy aligns the organization towards a common goal. Business SWOT helps company to identify & overcome their weaknesses & focus to sharpen the strengths. Business strategy forecasts future risks and helps business in building skillsets to overcome the potential threats.

YRC’s Business Plan focuses on creating a “Blueprint” of the business, thereby deriving the feasibility of the concept & gauge whether the opportunity is lucrative to invest time, energy & effort. Business Plan creates cash flow understanding i.e. building inflow & outflow cash projections from Week zero to week 60 i.e. 05 year projection. Business Plan calculates the capital investment, operating costs, one-time costs, recurring costs & all the other numbers relevant to obtain the breakeven sales, return on investment, return on capital, internal rate of return & several other ratios. Business Plan is also one of the important requirements if you are targeting the “Investor Route”. Fund raising becomes extremely transparent & channelized. With business plan panned out clearly, the business will know until what point must it be stretched & where to stop, which reduces the probability of unplanned investments.

MARKET RESEARCH

Starting the concept of Ecommerce Fashion brand with Market Research ensures we get detailed understanding of the industry & this research report also acts as a social confirmation for your concept. Market Research helps in understanding the target locations, their population, potential online buyers for your product, competitors for each category, and top selling products of the competitors, competitors’ price range, offers & their responses & much more. Market Research helps in thorough understanding of your brand position as compared to our competitors. It helps in identifying gaps in the market, in your category along with the scope of the said product in the desired market. This will help in validation of your concept & prevents you from making the same mistakes as your fellow brands, eventually saving your time, energy & efforts. This phase is also a make or a break phase, as the market research study may at-times come up with some eye-popping numbers & statistics which might compel you to re-think on your product or category that you are planning to sell or alter your entire concept itself!! Market Research Reports analyse the competitors’ webstore for their traffic, conversion & sales. This is extremely valuable information to derive our inventory budgets & projections, which takes us to our next phase.