What started as a way of offering convenience to customers at their doorstep during the COVID-19 lockdown has now become a mainstay in the retail industry.
We are talking about quick commerce (qCommerce).
qCommerce is a type of eCommerce focused on delivering products to customers quickly within an hour. This could be food delivery, grocery, or any other small order that can be delivered promptly. The competition in this segment is so high that companies are trying to deliver products as quickly as within 10 to 30 minutes!
Apart from being a key business differentiator, qCommerce provides convenience to customers who want small orders to be delivered to their doorstep immediately. It helps companies improve customer experience and allows them to generate more revenue.
According to Statista, revenue in the qCommerce segment is expected to grow at an annual CAGR of 13.11% by 2027. qCommerce is here to stay for a long time.
The success of the qCommerce business completely depends on the speed and efficiency of the order fulfillment process. Hence, it’s become that one core area that companies must focus on to dispatch products within the stipulated timeline.
Let’s look at how order fulfillment can be improved with the help of technologies like computer vision.
How Does Order Fulfillment Work in qCommerce?
Before we delve into how computer vision can improve order fulfillment, let’s understand how the process works. Order fulfillment involves the following steps:
Sorting
The products that enter the fulfillment center have Store Keep Units (SKU) and barcodes that help the picking teams to retrieve them when the demand arises. These products are sorted and organized to simplify the order fulfillment process.
Picking
When a customer places an order, the order fulfillment management system notifies the picking and packing team to initiate order processing. The picking team uses technologies like warehouse automation to pick the products from the warehouse. The order fulfillment system provides details, such as the list of product SKUs, sizes, number of units, and more.
Packing
The products are sent to the packaging team that uses robots to pack them with appropriate packing materials to ensure that they are delivered safely to the customer.
Delivery
The delivery partner picks up the order and uses systems like route optimization software to reach the customer’s destination quickly.
While this process works well, qCommerce is a new ball game. The order fulfillment process has to be quick and more streamlined to ensure that customers receive their orders in a short duration.
That’s where computer vision can be effective.
How Can Computer Vision Accelerate Order Fulfillment?
Computer Vision is a field in Artificial Intelligence (AI) that enables computers to acquire, process, understand, and analyze digital images and videos to extract information and use those insights to make informed decisions. Here are a few ways qCommerce companies can use computer vision to streamline and ramp up the order fulfillment process.
1. Automated Sorting
Manual sorting can be time-consuming and error-prone. It’s also not an apt choice for a qCommerce business where speed is necessary. Computer vision automates the sorting process. It analyzes the images and videos, categorizes the products, and helps place them accurately in the right location to ensure there are no misclassifications.
Automated sorting improves operations and can fulfill high volumes of sorting requirements without any error. It can help qCommerce companies streamline operations and ensure timely delivery to customers.
2. Barcode Scanning
qCommerce companies don’t have to scan barcodes and cross-verify information manually anymore. Computer vision can automatically scan text and barcodes and cross-verify product details with the information available in the system. It allows the warehouse staff to pick the right products for delivery.
Computer vision can scan multiple barcodes at once, even in low light or other challenging conditions. It helps speed up the process of scanning barcodes, verifying the details, and improving the overall accuracy of the order fulfillment process.
3. OCR Recognition
Computer vision helps with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) by automatically extracting critical information from images of order numbers, product SKUs, shipping addresses, etc., and entering it into a database or an ERP system. It decreases the likelihood of errors due to manual data entry, improves accuracy, and streamlines and ramps up the order fulfillment process.
4. Product Verification
Computer vision has brought a significant change in the order fulfillment process. It helps the warehouse staff detect product authenticity by scanning the barcodes and ensuring no counterfeit products are available. It also verifies the quantity of products to ensure the correct quantity is delivered to customers.
Computer vision can also help detect the product’s condition for defects and ensure that the customer receives the product in good condition.
5. Order Tracking
Stock tracking is a cumbersome and complex process that cannot be done manually in a fast-paced qCommerce industry. Computer vision captures the images of the products and tracks their movement via barcodes. It detects the number of products in a designated area and flags errors immediately. This helps the warehouse staff monitor products efficiently and reduce incidents of lost or incorrect inventory. This further helps enhance customer experience and realize cost savings.
Conclusion
From automating the sorting process to scanning barcodes and tracking orders, Computer vision has the potential to revolutionize the qCommerce industry and make order fulfillment more effective. It can help companies improve customer experience, reduce churn, and streamline operations.
However, choose a computer vision-based automation platform that can make sense of all visual data and assist in making informed decisions.
KamerAI, for instance, is a computer vision-based automation platform that integrates the power of computer vision with an array of enterprise and special purpose systems. This allows qCommerce companies to extract and analyze barcodes, numbers, alphabets, etc., from visual data, automatically capture accurate dimensions of parcels, and deliver products to customers on time.
To know more about KamerAI, contact us.
