WASHINGTON, DC - The Subcommittee on Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection, chaired by Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH) held a hearing today examining the impact of emerging technology on retail, e-commerce, and delivery logistics.
“This hearing is part of this subcommittee’s ongoing effort to explore how the Internet and advanced technology impacts our lives, jobs, and economy," said Chairman Latta in his opening remarks.
He continued, “Ohio is already home to some of the most highly regarded e-commerce fulfillment and shipping facilities in the country. Many retailers and e-commerce companies have made the investment in fulfillment and shipping operations in my home state because of our outstanding workforce, Ohio’s transportation network, and the proximity to major population centers. Emerging innovations, such as premium delivery, parcel locker boxes, and drones, will surely challenge the future of the supply chain to provide higher performance to satisfy consumers."
Jonathan Johnson, Member, Board of Directors, Overstock.com, spoke to how new technologies such as mobile apps and personalization tools impact the consumer experience, commenting, “I appreciate the subcommittee taking time to learn about new technologies and what laws and regulations stand in the way of their deployment and adoption…in an ever-advancing world where technology, innovation and consumer expectations quickly evolve, we are also constantly incorporating new technology into our business model to improve customer experience. Much of this technology empowers our customers or those working directly with them to make informed decisions."
In his response to a question on the role of data in improving efficiency and customer service, Rob Taylor, CEO, Convey Logistics, told the subcommittee, “One of the challenges that our retail customers face today is a lack of visibility into those in-transit, out-for-delivery shipments to customers. The reason they don’t have visibility is because they don’t have the data. Their carrier networks are more complex, and each of those carriers produces data differently. Through our technology, we ingest all of the data from their carriers, we transform it, we put a predictive layer in it, and that enables us to identify exception cases or distress shipments very early in the process - which then allows our customer, the retailer, to be proactive instead of being reactive to customer complaints."
Dan Sanker, Founder, President and CEO, Casestack, Inc., discussed how supply chain innovation will affect consumers and retail as a whole, stating, “We are currently developing a new division of CaseStack called SupplyPike with the expectation that it will spin off to become the leading cloud-based platform for supply chain professionals in the consumer goods industry. The CaseStack cloud-based technology platform already enables consumer packaged goods companies to manage everything from merchant interaction, account management, improvements in sourcing & forecasting, item setups, sell-through optimization, logistics and business analytics. The SupplyPike technology platform will open that up to more of the half-million Americans who are somehow involved in the supply chain as supply chain professionals."
