Is Your Logistics Strategy Keeping Up with Customer Expectations?
- Kirsty Tull
- Apr 16
- 4 min read
AN INTERVIEW WITH: ARIJIT BISWAS - Senior Business Solutions Manager, Daifuku Oceania
Ever find yourself eagerly waiting for the latest shipping update to ping on your phone? Turns out you’re not alone.
Whether you see yourself as an avid online shopper, or find yourself at the mercy of increased consumer demand – this read is for you.
According to a recent white paper featured by Power Retail, 78% of consumers cite post-purchase experience—including delivery, returns, and tracking—as highly important, with 44% refusing to shop with a brand again after a poor experience. As customer loyalty becomes increasingly fragile, retailers must reassess their logistics strategies to ensure seamless, efficient, and reliable post-purchase interactions.
The rise of e-commerce has reshaped consumer expectations, with younger demographics driving demand for speed, transparency, and efficiency in the post-purchase experience. So how can retailers maintain their competitive edge? We might just have the solution.
The Challenge: Rising Expectations in the E-commerce Landscape
The white paper highlights three primary factors influencing online shopping decisions: price, product range, and delivery experience. With platforms like Amazon, Temu, and Shein setting new standards for rapid fulfillment and real-time tracking, traditional retailers face immense pressure to enhance their supply chain infrastructure.
Key consumer trends
Increased demand for faster, more accurate deliveries
Higher importance placed on free returns and tracking
A shift towards cross-shopping and reduced brand loyalty, making every customer interaction critical.
The Solution: Automation as the Backbone of Post-Purchase Excellence
Retailers and logistics providers must invest in scalable, automated solutions to meet evolving consumer demands. Daifuku, a global leader in material handling automation, plays a crucial role in optimising post-purchase logistics. Here’s how:
1. Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (AS/RS): Speeding Up Fulfillment
AS/RS solutions enhance warehouse efficiency by automatically retrieving and storing items, reducing manual errors and processing times. This ensures:
Faster order fulfillment to meet rapid delivery expectations.
Optimised space utilisation, allowing retailers to store a broader range of SKUs.
Seamless integration with order management systems for real-time inventory accuracy.
2. Sorting Solutions: Ensuring Accuracy and Speed Daifuku’s Surfing Sorter efficiently handles high volumes of parcels with precision, ensuring orders are dispatched swiftly. This minimises misrouted shipments and enhances the overall end-customer experience.
Capable of sorting thousands of parcels per hour, reducing delays.
Handles diverse package sizes and weights, ideal for e-commerce.
Improves last-mile logistics coordination, ensuring deliveries meet strict timelines.
3. Goods-to-Person (GTP) Systems: Enhancing Order Picking Efficiency
GTP systems bring items directly to pickers, eliminating unnecessary movement and accelerating order fulfillment.
Reduces labour dependency, addressing workforce challenges.
Enhances order accuracy, reducing returns and improving customer satisfaction.
Supports omnichannel fulfillment, integrating seamlessly with click-and-collect models.
4. Sorting Transfer Vehicles (STVs): Enhancing Intralogistics
STVs streamline internal warehouse transportation, ensuring orders move efficiently through the fulfillment process. Their benefits include:
Reduced forklift congestion in distribution centres.
Increased throughput, ensuring faster packing and dispatch.
Seamless coordination with AS/RS and sorting systems for a fully automated fulfillment ecosystem.
For more insight on how automation can revolutionise the post-purchase experience, I spoke with Arijit Biswas, Senior Business Solutions Manager of Intralogistics, Daifuku Oceania.
Kirsty Tull: What are the first considerations for businesses considering automation?
Arijit Biswas: First and foremost, one should never try to automate everything/every process in the warehouse. If you have large and bulky items that are unsuitable for automation, for example, fridges, beds, furniture, dangerous goods like combustible liquids, drums of oil or corrosive liquids, these SKUs should be excluded from the automation scope. Having a good Master Data of your stock holding and day-to-day transactional data allows a business, like Daifuku, to comprehend, through data analysis, your business profile, risks, demands and challenges.
KT: What should the data tell us about a business?
AB: The data analysis paints an excellent picture of your business profile and tells us whether you have the scale of operations to benefit from automation. The analysis also tells us which elements of your operation are most labour-intensive or which SKUs can be stored more efficiently.
KT: For businesses suited to automation, what benefits can it provide?
AB: For businesses that are best suited to adopt automation, it fundamentally improves warehouse storage efficiency, accuracy, enhances operational flexibility, and improves labour utilisation. The automation Daifuku provides is flexible and scalable to changing future business needs. Therefore, adapting the Automation Solution via software or bolt-on features, such as additional sort lanes and conveyor infeed points, is absolutely viable.
KT: How does Daifuku differ within the automation space?
AB: It is important to understand that Daifuku does not just provide material handling equipment to make your processes efficient. We are partners for your business solution and growth. We will consult, design, engineer, manufacture, install and commission, along with after-sales and continued support of your operations. Many of our partnerships potentially span 30 years, so changes to your business, and subsequently automation, are inevitable. We will help you scope the right scale of automation, plan to mitigate risk in implementation, and go live, therefore future-proofing your business. In short, selecting the right partner for your business is crucial.
Key Takeaways: Using Automation to Redefine Post-Purchase Logistics
To meet rising customer expectations and improve retention, retailers must embrace warehouse automation to ensure a strategic advantage. Here's how:
Start with data: Conduct a thorough analysis of your SKUs and order profiles to identify the areas best suited for automation.
Scale gradually: Begin with scalable solutions like modular AS/RS or Goods-to-Person systems to test impact before full rollout.
Streamline intralogistics: Use STVs and sorting systems to reduce bottlenecks and human error in fulfillment.
Drive operational resilience: Automation reduces reliance on labour and ensures consistency during peak seasons or market fluctuations.
An experienced automation partner is well-placed to guide you on this journey.
Final Thought: Is Your Business Prepared?
As consumer expectations continue to evolve, businesses must ask themselves: Is our supply chain equipped to meet the demands of the modern e-commerce shopper? By integrating Daifuku’s advanced automation technologies, retailers can transform the post-purchase experience—turning logistics into a competitive advantage rather than a challenge.
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The start of your automation journey can feel overwhelming; that's why we're here to help.
There are many ways to connect with Daifuku.
To explore how to elevate your logistics operations, contact us today.
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