loading animation

title

 

GEODIS | Activity | e-Commerce | e-Logistics | FAQ 

 

 

GEODIS eLogistics

Frequently Asked Questions

Introduction

CATEGORIES

OUR OFFER

Our offer

Questions

GEODIS eLogistics is our new offer dedicated to e-Commerce. It provides a customizable and scalable e-Fulfillment and transportation network to handle your products from order to delivery to returns. Thanks to our Distributed Order Management System (DOMS), you will be able to orchestrate your orders across channels and pilot a personalized delivery experience. 

GEODIS eLogistics has been designed for brands that are looking for a flexible and scalable logistics network, with the ambition to provide a best-in-class delivery experience to their end customers. It will empower you to significantly increase your online sales, extend your market footprint, and improve your customer loyalty. 

TARGET AUDIENCE

Target Audience

Questions

Our e-Logistics offer best suits companies that: 

  • Operate within two or more fulfillment nodes  
  • Run a webshop and/or sell through marketplaces 
  • Have a physical store network 

GEOGRAPHICAL FOOTPRINT

Geographical Footprint

Questions

GEODIS eLogistics provides optimal delivery capabilities across the European Union and the USA. Our e-Fufillment and transportation network enables you to reach over 90% of the target population within two days. In fact, we can reach more than half of these target customers in one day or less.   

GEODIS eLogistics leverages GEODIS global network, with more than 300 logistics platforms located in 120 countries. We offer more than 70,000,000  square feet of warehousing space and deliver more than 100 million parcels each year through express and parcel delivery.

We also have four shared e-Fulfillment centers in the European Union and four in the USA, allowing us to get closer to your customers in the most flexible way.

CSR

CSR

Questions

Our GEODIS eLogistics offer can help your organization achieve progress in the sustainability journey as we: 

  • Establish a consolidated fulfillment network that optimizes your first and middle mile transportation network.
  • Get your product closer to your customer and setting pick-up points to optimize your last mile (performed by start-up partners for smooth and sustainable delivery). 
  • Reduce your warehouse environmental footprint thanks to inventory allocation and replenishment optimization.

Would you like to estimate your e-Commerce carbon footprint savings? See our carbon-saving estimation tool here.

INTERFACE WITH MARKETPLACES

Interface with marketplaces

Questions4

GEODIS eLogistics can manage the order and the delivery of your sales made through marketplaces with best-in-class performance and a great customer experience. It allows you to maintain a single inventory view for all distribution channels, while dropshipping can reduce costs related to marketplace operations. 

PROJECT SET-UP

Project set-up

Questions5

The average time from contract signing to launching the platform at your site varies, and will depend on the complexity of your business, as well as your supply chain ecosystem and IT landscape. In general, implementation can occur within three to six months.

Yes. GEODIS will work hand-in-hand with you, with a team of experts to walk you through the complete onboarding process and coach your teams for optimal solution use.  

Our DOMS  platform supports multiple locales, including, currency, time and date format and language. And if you aren’t global yet, our IT assets will grow with you when you take that important step.

PRICING & CONTRACT

Pricing & Contract

Questions6

We’ll provide you with exact pricing after our team of experts runs a detailed analysis of your needs, including the level of integration required and the capabilities you choose (e.g. inventory visibility, order management, store engagement, customer service, etc.). Please contact our experts for a free business case analysis – we’ll use your data to estimate your potential future savings.

We’ll adapt the contract to your needs. GEODIS eLogistics usually proves its value within four to eight months. After this, technology such as inventory placement optimization can provide additional long-term benefits.

INVENTORY MANAGEMENT

Inventory management

Questions7

Our IT system allows you to manage your inventory in your preferred way through a single global platform: mono, multi or omni-channel. You can also keep your B2B and B2C inventories separate or merged, depending on the design of your supply chain. 

Absolutely. You will retain 100% inventory ownership and allocation management. Our mission is to provide you with full and real-time visibility.

Yes. You can fully customize the level of stock fragmentation according to the service you wish to offer to your end customer, with a single and global view of your enterprise inventory. 

GEODIS eLogistics connects to your network (warehouses, fulfillment centers, stores, in transit or forecasted shipments, etc.) and provides complete and real-time inventory visibility of all product flows. We also use Application Performing Interfaces (APIs) to provide cross-channel visibility, ensuring that your products are always available-for-sale. 

INVENTORY VIEW

Inventory view

Questions8

You can track your inventory through all of your usual channels under the management of your company, under the management of other partners, or under GEODIS management. You will be able to ensure available-to-promise delivery to your customers as you benefit from dynamic order allocation across suppliers, delivery centers, wholesalers and stores, with control over sourcing rules and delivery options.

INVENTORY PLANNING AND REPLENISHMENT

Inventory planning and replenishment

Questions9

This will remain your responsibility. You will be able to monitor planning and manage your suppliers through the DOMS platform, which will recommend the best options for you. 

GEODIS eLogistics provides visibility through enterprise inventory, enabling you to optimize your stocks per channel and their localizations. This will help you to maximize your sales and reduce the costs of your inventory.  

INVENTORY ALLOCATION, PLACEMENT AND ORDER ORCHESTRATION

Inventory allocation, placement and order orchestration

Questions10

This will depend on how you currently handle your inventory. If you manage your orders and inventory by channel without cross-allocation, you could move to dynamic allocation in the future (in real time, and taking order constraints into consideration).  

You will remain in charge of your inventory and its replenishment. GEODIS eLogistics will help you optimize inventory allocation to speed-up delivery times and decrease transportation costs. 

We use a DOMS to determine the best location to fulfill an order and the best shipper/carrier to deliver it. 

You will be able to set multiple and complex order routing rules to meet your customers’ expectations in an efficient and cost-effective way. 

DISTRIBUTION NETWORK DENSITY

Distribution network density

Questions11

GEODIS eLogistics enables your organization to access all the capabilities of a best-in-class logistics solution (including warehouses, fulfillment, IT systems, a management team, etc.) while reducing costs each step of the way. Each inventory is managed separately, allowing us to optimally manage the business specificities of each order fulfillment (such as customized packaging, etc.). 

Yes. This is exactly what we offer –a flexible and scalable logistics network. We will adapt to your short and long-term storage needs. This is one of the many benefits of sharing capacities and being part of a global network…it helps you optimize your company assets. 

During peak seasons, we can even provide ‘pop-up’ locations to ensure close and fast access to your end customers. 

E-FULFILLMENT MODEL

e-Fulfillment model

Questions12

Our DOMS provides you with three main order fulfillment benefits, as we: 

  • Provide access to transparent and qualitative information about your inventory so that you don’t sell products that are out of stock. 
  • Create synergies among your sales channels to achieve cost-efficiency and better performance.
  • Orchestrate your orders in real-time and increase your delivery time performance.

STORE INTEGRATION

Store integration

Questions13

Yes. Our DOMS manages order sourcing and fulfillment from brick-and-mortar stores. GEODIS can also provide advice about how to best mobilize your network based on your specific business strategy (geographical scope, investments, marketing strategy, etc.). 

Yes. GEODIS eLogistics allows click-and-collect, and provides real-time visibility on product availability. 

FULFILLMENT CAPACITY PLANNING

Fulfillment capacity planning

Questions14

Peak times such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing Day can be a real challenge. We respond quickly to the capacity needs of our regular customers through a flexible and scalable network that adapts yearly capacity – up or down – by up to 30%. 

PARTNER MANAGEMENT

Partner management

Questions15

Yes. GEODIS offers the possibility to fully operate your supply chain from an end-to-end perspective, or leverage your existing capabilities and partners to design a tailored network connected to our DOMS.

There is no limit. 

Yes. We will work hand in hand with your parcel carriers and your teams to integrate your carriers into our global network. 

SPEED OF DELIVERY

Speed of delivery

Questions16

GEODIS achieves two to four day delivery throughout its network in the EU and the USA. If you need to speed up delivery times, we can offer capabilities close to your final market and design the best contract for you with parcel carriers. 

Piloting supply chain and delivery performance is at the heart of GEODIS’ expertise. Thanks to our digital platform and dedicated dashboards, we continuously monitor our performance and our partners’ performance to ensure that what is promised is delivered. We commit to this through a binding engagement with you.

QUALITY (DAMAGE, LOSS OR INCOMPLETE DELIVERY)

Quality (damage, loss or incomplete delivery)

Questions17

GEODIS’ performance management includes the end-to-end scope of your supply chain. Your parcel carriers can be integrated into this approach upon request.  

GEODIS eLogistics’ dashboard and reporting enable the close monitoring of multiple status flow and performance indicators, with key metrics such as:

  • The status of each parcel along the delivery chain (e.g., ship, in transit and at which step, delivered, returned, etc.)
  • Parcel volume mapping by relevant flow and carrier
  • On-time-delivery performance versus customer promise
  • Ship-to-Deliver's lead time
  • Customer claims due to transportation (loss, delay, damage, etc.)
  • Customer return rates and root causes
  • Parcel delivery costs

The layout, structure and content of our dashboard is largely tailored to your organization, which allows us to adjust the transportation solution and specific requirements. It will provide you with the granularity, user interfaces and data mining tools you need for the real-time monitoring of parcel delivery flow in order to identify and solve potential issues. Reporting is structured to provide you with relevant information down to the multiple management layer while giving you the required historical perspective and benchmarking to identify and track improvement opportunities with all your internal and external stakeholders (supply chain, fulfillment center, parcel carrier, etc.).

COST OPTIMIZATION

Cost optimization

Questions18

GEODIS can help you design the most efficient network within your organization and your partners’ ecosystem. This type of consolidated network will bring you closer to your end-customers while optimizing transportation time and costs. We’ll work with you to design business rules to help us select the most competitive transportation option for you in real time, and propose attractive fees from partners.

If you want to expand internationally or if you already sell your products abroad, GEODIS can take charge of the cross-border, first and middle mile at a competitive cost.    

TRANSPORTATION OPERATIONS

Transportation operations

Questions19

Yes, GEODIS eLogistics offers a variety of intercontinental and intracontinental services.

Yes. Your marketplace’s partners can dropship order execution to GEODIS. Also, if a product is out of stock at a GEODIS fulfillment center, our DOMS can dropship it to one of your logistics centers or stores. You won’t miss a single sale. 

We propose Full Truck Load (FTL) and Less-Than-Truckload (LTL). We are highly experienced in this area, and our Road Transport Solutions offer qualified drivers, a fleet of vehicles, and a charter network to guarantee flexibility, responsiveness, and high transportation capacity. 

Our team of experts will help you choose the right partner(s) with the required network and planning. Then we will commit to correct contract execution through real-time order execution monitoring. We also perform root cause analysis with your last mile carriers to continuously improve performance.

INTERFACING WITH EXISTING IT

Interfacing with existing IT

Questions20

We will provide a team of IT and functional experts to assess the best architecture and supply chain design for your business. These experts are highly experienced in the market-proven technology solutions that we have developed over the years (TMS, WMS, Hub of Carriers, etc.). 

When it comes to your webshops, we can also propose a set of standard and customizable interfaces (API, EDI, SFTP, etc.), making it easier to connect to any type of e-Commerce platform (e.g. Shopify, Magento, etc.). 

Our DOMS is based on a multi-tenant architecture. Basically, a single instance of the solution is capable of servicing all of your Group’s brands. You will save time and money as you prepare your solution while remaining able to customize it according to each of your brand’s needs (specfic UI, business rules, business processes, data model layers, etc.). 

OPERATIONAL DATA MANAGEMENT

Operational data management

Questions21

Yes. You will keep control of the data used by our e-Logistics solution – it will remain your property.

Yes. You can manage the fulfillment network through our dedicated DOMS business User Controls. This tool translates your business goals into actions through an intuitive interface, contextual data, and key performance metrics.  

Yes. You will be able to recover your data upon termination of the services and a reversibility plan will be agreed in the contract. 

The solution’s security architecture supports the classification and protection of sensitive information in compliance with your corporate security policy and/or GDPR for customer information, competitive information, and financial data. A role-based security model is available, which will only allow authorized users to perform specific platform/module functionality. More specifically, users are assigned to roles which have associated access rights within the system to specific functions within each module. Access rights to specific fields are controlled by access to associated data forms during setup and configuration.

CUSTOMER DATA ANALYTICS

Customer data anlytics

Questions22

Our accessible dashboards and predictive analysis offer real-time data visualization. Our DOMS solution also incorporate machine learning/Artificial Intelligence as part of the future roadmap. 

The Inventory Fulfillment Optimization tool will be able to assist in forecasting inventory positioning at each node, leading to savings in sourcing, working capital and asset optimization. 

ASSORTMENT ACCESSIBILITY

Assortment accessibility

Questions23

GEODIS eLogistics ensures that your brand is selling products that are available for sale. Once ordered, they are booked in real time and not available in your ATP. Our DOMS will also provide real-time recommendations for the best sourcing locations based on your customized rules. 

FLEXIBILITY

Flexibility

Questions24

Our solution manages all delivery options for your end-customers. These include pick up in-store, pick up point, ship to store, ship to home, and endless aisle. 

Depending on the carrier parcel service, our digital solution can propose different days and time slots to the customer. The delivery slot can be changed until the physical fulfillment of the order is launched. 

Yes. This is managed through the execution of the last mile carrier contract. 

Yes. All product information and delivery status for each parcel carrier is tracked and displayed in the solution. 

EASE OF RETURNS

Ease of returns

Questions25

GEODIS eLogistics can support you in defining the right parcel return strategy for the entire process flow (capture the return request, collect the merchandise, transport it to the final destination).

You will be able to propose returns to the store or an e-Fulfillment Center, and choose between scrapping or returning the merchandise straight back into inventory.