Blockchain has an endless list of possible applications, and is quickly emerging as one of the major innovations in the digital technology industry. Supply chain management experts are already looking at practical applications for blockchain. Given that UK online sales alone are expected to grow by up to £77bn every year until 2021, they can see blockchain is poised to completely disrupt the logistics industry.

In May 2017, Deloitte tweeted that 10% of global GDP would be built on top of blockchain applications. Andreas Freund, Ph.D., a senior manager for Tata Consultancy Services’ blockchain advisory, also predicts blockchain technology will be as revolutionary as the Internet, changing our marketplaces and our enterprises in ways that are hard to imagine right now. These ambitious claims are due to the innovative nature of blockchain and the potential it has to change the way we do business.

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Three Unique Opportunities They Can Leverage to Flourish

The past decade has seen the rapid rise of the retail giant and the slow descent of the traditional retailer. The retail landscape has been transformed to such a degree, as to be unrecognizable. From this chaos, however, opportunities for the small, independent retailers are emerging.

The news in 2017 and early 2018 has been dominated with talk of mergers and acquisitions among the retail giants. Online retailer Amazon acquired bricks and mortar Whole Foods; and is now entering the health care industry as well. Tesco is merging with Booker to create the UK’s leading food business. WalMart acquired Jet.com and continues to gobble up technology startups. At the same time, retail technology has drastically changed customers’ expectations, providing them easy access to product information anywhere, at any time and redefining value and convenience.

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Handling delivery demands during peak periods is a challenge every growing business must overcome. Businesses who handle their own deliveries with company vans will sometimes encounter busy weeks when they require more manpower than they possess.

This is where a courier comes in handy. Choosing the right delivery service can be overwhelming and most businesses think about cost first. Cost is an important consideration, but it is best to set it aside for a moment while thinking about choosing the right delivery service.

Why is this? A delivery service is a business’s last chance to make a customer happy. Even if the product is perfect and the order correct, if it doesn’t get to the customer when it was promised, that dissatisfied customer is unlikely to purchase from that business again. Correct and timely deliveries are an effective way to delight customers, and no business owner wants to miss out on an opportunity to do so.

Here are a few factors every business owner should think about when choosing a courier.

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If your local business sells a physical product, it must offer delivery.

Offering excellent delivery options is one of the smartest investments your company can. And with so many delivery startups and tech solutions on the market, it can be an effortless investment, too.

Need some convincing? Consider the following reasons for embracing delivery.

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Have you ever entered a shop and instantly felt at home? Like you were meant to be there, and everything around you was a perfect fit? A guilty pleasure?

In the recent years, enterprises have leveraged big data and analytics to gather fresh customer insights and put the customer experience at the very heart of their organizations. Personalisation has become the principal pillar of growth in the retail industry and many successful brick-and-mortar companies have integrated their primary business channels (online, in-store, and mobile) to boost sales and keep the customers coming back for more.

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In 2013, UPS and FedEx made a tempting promise to American consumers: Save your gift shopping until the last minute because we’ll deliver your gifts by Christmas Day.

That promise was quickly broken. Countless shoppers woke up on Christmas morning to find there wasn’t so much as a piece of brown paper waiting on their doorstep. Angry consumers took to social media to complain while UPS and FedEx scrambled to apologize to customers.

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This past decade retail has undergone a transformational change. Mobile technology and the Internet, as both a tool and a channel, have completely disrupted the retail industry. At the same time, populations have been concentrating in cities, driving growth and creating both challenges and opportunities as cities design urban logistics ecosystems that revolve around mobility. With many of the traditional market differentiators flattened, urban retailers can exploit these mobility improvements to develop an agile operating structure that will help win market share and maximise profits.

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Over the last decade retailers have been working hard to achieve omni-channel excellence, yet many are still losing sales painfully close to the checkout. On average, 68 percent of online shopping carts are abandoned at an estimated value of £3.7 trillion globally, according to research from Baymard Institute.

While abandoned shopping carts continue to frustrate retailers online, in-store sales are being lost for the very same reason; retailers are struggling to meet shoppers’ delivery expectations.

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The customer experience isn’t something that retailers are always able to control. In an age where shoppers are spending more and more on delivery and their expectation for convenience keeps rising higher, many retailers have no choice but to rely on third party delivery providers to ensure that the customer’s expectations are met.

A recent survey by Brisqq found that 62 percent of Londoners are aware of the delivery providers that their preferred retailers use and a majority of them (89 percent) feel that the retailer’s choice of delivery provider can influence their decision on whether or not they will order a product from that retailer. It is clear that the delivery provider’s level of service has a strong impact on the customer experience.

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Courier services are essential to businesses of all sizes. Until recently the process of shipping a package to shoppers, documents to other businesses or other branches of the same organisation has been widely viewed as somewhat effective, but also costly.

Traditional courier services were the only way for small businesses without the internal infrastructure needed to ship or transport items. On top of this, the emergence of on-demand services such as Uber and Deliveroo have drawn public attention to the inefficiencies of traditional logistics services. Since consumers are used to convenience in other areas of their lives - why not provide them with such choice and flexibility when it comes to deliveries?

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