Optimised order-fulfilment for online micro-businesses post Covid-19

虽然冠状病毒对经济的大部分领域产生了巨大的负面影响，但它也推动了其他领域的巨大增长。其中一个领域是互联网邮购，封锁使英国邮购包裹数量几乎在一夜之间增加了26%。这种增长在很大程度上是由微型卖家推动的，他们有独特的能力适应并在大企业无法做到的情况下继续交易。与此同时，数千家新的小型在线销售企业应运而生，这些企业通常是由在家工作的人创办的，他们希望弥补疫情造成的收入损失。在短短一个月内（2020年5月），eBay报告称，仅在英国就有惊人的5万家新的小型独立零售商加入了他们的网站。在过去的几年里，我们一直在开发计算机硬件/软件系统和业务流程，旨在提高配送（特别是多渠道电子商务）业务的拣货和包装任务的效率和准确性。我们的创新理念是采用我们开发的分销行业挑选和包装最佳实践，并以这样一种方式进行包装，以便能够为在Covid大流行期间出现/成长的微型卖家带来好处，同时完全消除其固有的实施和管理复杂性。并非我们开发的所有流程都是新的，但它们的特点是，它们目前都只能作为大型、非常昂贵的仓储管理系统的一部分在商业上使用，中小企业和微型企业无法实现。该项目专注于使我们成熟的系统能够实现这些流程，以现成的硬件和软件包的形式提供。该解决方案将是模块化的，在功能和容量方面完全可扩展，即使是最小的在线销售企业也可以轻松安装和维护，使他们能够实现关键绩效指标的结果，目前只有大型，资源丰富的企业使用昂贵的定制系统。这些kpi包括：*订单履行时间/成本*拣货错误和由此产生的退货率*客户纠纷和由此产生的退款/退货率*准时发货和交付，增值和由此产生的客户满意度和重复业务指标*提高灵活性，允许分散和高效的产品存储位置，从而降低成本和环境影响

Whilst Coronavirus has had a massively negative impact on large parts of the economy, it has also driven huge growth in other areas. One such area is that of Internet Mail Order where Lockdown increased UK mail-order parcel volumes by 26% virtually overnight. Much of that growth was driven by micro-sellers who were uniquely able to adapt and continue to trade when larger businesses couldn't. At the same time, thousands of new, small online selling businesses were formed, often by people working from home and looking to replace income lost to the Pandemic. In just one month (May 2020), eBay, reported that a staggering 50,000 new small, independent retailers, joined their site in the UK alone.For the last few years, we have been developing computer hardware/software systems and business processes which are designed to improve the efficiency and accuracy of order picking and packing tasks in distribution (particularly multi-channel e-commerce) businesses.The concept of our innovation is to take the distribution industry picking and packing best-practices which we have developed, and package them in such a way as to be able to deliver their benefits to micro-sellers who have emerged/grown through the Covid Pandemic whilst completely removing their inherent implementation and management complexities.Not all of the processes we have developed are new, but what characterises them is that exclusively, they are all currently only commercially available as part of large, very expensive warehousing management systems which are out of reach of SMEs and Micro-businesses.This project focuses on making our proven systems which enable these processes, available in the form of an off-the-shelf hardware and software package, The solution will be modular and totally scalable in terms of function and capacity and easily installed and maintained by even the smallest of online selling businesses enabling them to achieve results in Key Performance Indicators which are currently enjoyed only by large, resource-rich businesses employing highly expensive bespoke systems. These KPIs include:* Order fulfilment times / costs* Picking errors and resulting returns rates* Customer disputes and resulting refund/reship rates* On-time dispatch & delivery, value-added and resulting customer satisfaction and repeat business metrics* Improved flexibility allowing fragmented and efficient product storage location which in-turn reduce cost and environmental impact