Survey: COVID-19 disrupts e-commerce, supply chain
A Google Cloud survey of global retail executives reveals some holiday optimism in the face of COVID-19-related enterprise challenges.
According to the survey, less than half of retail executives surveyed globally (43%) felt that their companies were properly equipped with the right technological tools to maintain business continuity in the early stages of the pandemic.
Looking ahead, only about half of respondents (51%) say their company overall is very prepared to deal with the shifting retail landscape that has taken place due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nearly all retail executives (94%) say COVID-19 related concerns are still keeping them up at night.
However, more than six in 10 respondents report being very confident (61%), and feel their companies overall are very prepared (62%) to deal with increases in consumer traffic this holiday season. Virtually all respondents (99%) say their companies are taking (or planning to take) action to prepare for the surge in online consumer traffic during the holiday season and their companies have website infrastructures are capable of scaling to handle traffic spikes this holiday season (92%).
The most common holiday preparations were preparing website infrastructures (45%), offering additional fulfillment options (44%), and working with tech vendors to have excess infrastructure capacity ready (41%). Respondents feel their e-commerce sites (60%) and IT teams (59%) are now “very prepared” to deal with what’s to come, including this current holiday season.
Other interesting findings include:
• Nearly one in five (17%) respondents experienced a website outage within the last year.
• Almost eight in 10 (78%) respondents are concerned about the viability of their companies’ supply chains for this holiday season.
• More than half of respondents are concerned the pandemic has made inventory management too difficult (61%), and that they may run out of inventory (53%) this holiday season.
• Leading steps respondents have taken to improve supply chain operations include increasing the use of technology for logistics planning (62%), expanding supplier partnerships (56%), and adding technology to improve planning, forecasting, or visibility (55%).
• When thinking about the top three emerging ways of purchasing goods and services, the majority of respondents say consumers will most commonly use pre-order/pickup in store (71%), same-day delivery (65%), and gig economy couriers/third-party delivery (52%).
• Six in 10 respondents say preparing new contact-less options for product pickup is a top holiday action being implemented this holiday season. Respondents anticipate the use of curbside pick-up will rise by 37% and BOPIS will rise by 39%, on average, compared to the holidays in 2019.
Google Cloud surveyed retail executives in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Brazil, Indonesia, and India.