A look forward to 2023

Bumpy road ahead?

For a lot of businesses and individuals, 2022 came to a close with a bit of a disappointing bump. For all the optimism, trading conditions have become increasingly challenging, and everyone is having to deal with increasing costs.

Intelligent businesses are now spending less time on 'trending graphical styles' and more time looking for 'better business practices'. 

Customer Loyalty

The volume of eCommerce orders reached a peak during 2021, but with the cost of living crisis, but we’ve already seen the speed of growth shrink significantly. In 2023, we’re going to be seeing the same challenges; rising inflation and the cost of living will bite, and spending power will diminish.

In that marketplace, customer loyalty becomes key.

The cost of acquiring a new customer is always higher that retaining a current one; current estimates show that it could be as much as five times more expensive! In the current climate, this only gets more important as recent research suggests that increasing customer retention by just 5% can increase profits by 25%-90%.

The question is how to do this, especially as 60% of your customers will have looked at your competitors' products this year. Possible measures include:

• staying in touch with your customers with regular marketing communication
• incentivising mailing list sign ups
• incentivising repeat purchases and referral programs
• omnichannel loyalty schemes offer the best customer experience
• adding subscriptions and memberships increases repeat income

Digitising the supply chain

After the pandemic and the global shipping crisis, everyone had predicted that 2022 would be a year of recovery, of things getting back on track. Shipping costs would come down, and we’d see the resurgence of the global economy.

That prediction may not have been accurate.

Shipping costs have come down, but while consumer expectations have risen (60% expect delivery within two days), supply chain challenges are still very real, especially in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Research has shown that two thirds of businesses are struggling with their existing supply chain and that they expect the situation to worsen in 2023. Just in Time supply chains simply aren’t holding up in the face of modern demand, so what’s the answer?

You can look at increasing your inventory holding (always fraught with risk), or diversify into multiple suppliers, but these options just aren’t always accessible. Taking steps to digitise your supply chain is an easily achievable way to increase your efficiency and reduce the reliance on your supply chain. Possible measures include:

• Automate the creation of back to back purchase orders to fulfil customer special orders
• Auto replenishment based on low stock figures or seasonal demand forecasting
• Barcode every product to cut down losses at goods in and stock take
• Scan products out of the business to minimise picking errors
• 100% stock visibility, so you don’t have aged stock languishing in warehouses