 Hi everyone. So today I'm going to talk about the role of supply chain in the e-commerce business. Before I delve into the nitty gritty of the role of supply chain, here is a little bit about myself. So right now I'm working as the application product manager in the business systems team at Google. Previously, I had work experience in companies like Walmart and Edgeworth in the supply chain e-commerce and retail domain. And I have also had consulting experience for clients like Apple and Syngenta. And so all in all, I have a decade long experience in e-commerce, supply chain systems, retail technologies, and overall implementation experience. So let me get into why an agile and resilient supply chain is necessary for the e-commerce business. So let's first understand what e-commerce is, right? So as Investopedia explains, e-commerce or electronics commerce refers to companies and individuals that buy and sell goods and services over the internet. It's simple terms, it means running an online business. And since today with the advent of internet, almost any transaction can occur through e-commerce websites today. Nothing is offline anymore, which makes e-commerce business very competitive. Going into a little bit into the history of e-commerce, the history of e-commerce goes back to the early 1990s. The e-commerce phenomenon kicked off in 1991 when the online world became more recognizable. E-commerce businesses can occur through different channels such as B2B, B2C, B2G. You name it, there are different channels today and we will talk more about the details of the channels in the upcoming slides. And by the end of 2001, business to business, which is a B2B model, it became the most effective domain of e-commerce as it roughly made around $700 billion in revenue. So you can imagine that by the end of 2001, the e-commerce space had already exploded. Now we can trace the growth of e-commerce businesses from 2001 onwards. If you speak about its growth in the last decade, according to Google Trends, it has remained steady with nominal fluctuations since 2008 until about 15-16. However, the trend of e-commerce began to grow with a promising incline since 2016 and 2017. And since then, more and more businesses began to create their online presence in order to grow in today's digital landscape. Today it is like infatamable to even imagine that you can have a business or not have a website or an interface of it with the customers. That is, that is a given for any businesses that you want to start today or they're existing in the current market. The best selling products that are emerging from categories like music, books, computers, office supplies and consumer electronics. So these are the best selling products in these product lines. Now, therefore, in order to get a product into the hands of a customer, it is imperative that not only the website but the supporting supply chain and system should be robust. What I mean by this is it's not only enough to provide a website and provide a seamless checkout experience and give you the search capabilities and cutting edge website trends. It's in fact more important that you have inventory in your warehouses or wherever you are sourcing your products from. And the entire supply chain and supply chain picture is robust and you have proper system to support those. Otherwise only having an interface with your customers with not enough inventory and not able to fulfill the orders is not going to help. So there should be a healthy combination of back end supply chain system and the front end UI applications. What is the importance of e-commerce in today's world, right? E-commerce offers a number of benefits of a brick and mortar stores. It allows customers to easily find the desired products through a large database. They can research the product beforehand, compare prices, learn more from customer reviews and then buy it once their concerns are rectified by the online customer support representative. Going to the next slide, this is kind of an infographic showing how e-commerce businesses run today, right? If you can see that you have a store front where you have your different items that are showing in a UI and then you can access those UI through your computer. Definitely you need a computer or a buy to access a website or an online store. And once you have decided on which product you want to buy, you put it in your cart. And once you put it in your cart, if there are any sale or any discounts or if there are any auctions, you avail those. And then you check out with your payment card or any other payment methodologies if you haven't rolled in a form or things like that. Once that is done, you check out and then you buy that product and then your order is tracked in the website. And then it is fulfilled by a warehouse like all those things happen in the background, but this is more of a e-commerce website experience. And then you have 24-7 support in case you are not able to track your online order or you have more questions about when it is arriving and things like that. So this is how e-commerce has evolved over a period of time and how easy it has become for you to order something from a click from your home. So it's that easy. Moving to e-commerce classification, there are different kind of e-commerce businesses today, but the four notable ones are business to business commerce, business to consumer e-commerce, consumer to consumer e-commerce and consumer to business e-commerce. So what are these different kind of businesses? So B2B e-commerce basically refers to trading goods or services from one business to another. So it's between business to business. The B2B model promotes online businesses to interchange goods with each other. For instance, a manufacturer sells his code to a full seller who then sells it to the retailer. In this scenario, the manufacturer and the whole seller are following the B2B model. Then what is B2C e-commerce? It's exactly as the name suggests, right? In the B2C e-commerce model, a business sells the codes of services directly to the individual customers online. So with the help of B2C model, the customers can view and purchase the desired products from the retailers online store. To give you a couple of examples, Amazon is an excellent example of B2C e-commerce model as the individual codes to individual customers. And there have been many B2C companies that have taken the market by storms like Expedia, IKEA, Netflix even because you are able to stream any kind of movie or series you want to stream today, right? So moving on to the next one, consumer to consumer or peer to peer e-commerce. Here, basically, the different customers can talk to one another or do business with one another, right? It allows the customer to sell their goods and services to other customers with the help of the Internet. Makes perfect sense in today's digital landscape. In simple terms, this is like mobile e-commerce. The B2C e-commerce model allows an individual to sell their assets online, for example, car, house or bike to other individuals. eBay or OLX is a great example of the C2C e-commerce model that is running successfully. Finally, consumer to business e-commerce. It is an interesting model which allows an individual customer to sell goods and services to a business. It follows a reverse path of the B2C model where businesses create products and services for the end user. For instance, if you are a software architect or if you are consulting or if you have some niche skill sets that you are able to provide or someone is in need of those skill sets, you can showcase in potential businesses on platforms like Fiverr or Afark. These are the different e-commerce businesses that we have today. Moving on, what are the top examples of e-commerce business, right? There are some pretty major examples of e-commerce businesses that have made it big including Amazon, Flipkart, eBay and Mintra. Going a little bit into a couple of examples like Amazon.com. Amazon.com is one of the best examples of thriving e-commerce business that initially began as a retailing platform. However, with the passage of time, they moved their operations online and became one of the largest e-commerce platforms in the world. Now, a thing to note is although the headquarters is located in the US, Amazon established different websites in various developed countries such as UK, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, China, even India, right? Amazon.com supports and offers retail websites for various popular organizations including Mars and Spencer, Lacoste, NBA, Beep stores, Target, etc. Another kind of e-commerce business is Wabi Parker. Wabi Parker is an American online i-ware retailer that is headquartered in New York City. They primarily sell prescription glasses and sunglasses through the website. However, they also have more than 80 retail stores in the US and Canada. The third one is ASOS. ASOS, which stands for As Seen on Screen, is a fashion brand that showcases the latest trends as seen on celebrities. Since the e-commerce company boomed into a multi-billion dollar business, it has suddenly learned which marketing campaigns are the most effective. So, this is at a high level, what are some of the e-commerce businesses out there which have made it pick in this landscape. Now, what are the different types of e-commerce business? One of them is dropshipping. Here, you don't have to store your inventory. So, you basically don't have to bear any kind of inventory canning cost. So, the dropshipping business allows you to purchase a product once you've already made a sale and have been paid by the customer. Once you get paid, you can purchase a product from a third party manufacturer or a supplier and ship the product directly to the customer. With a dropshipping model, the store owner don't have to worry about ever seeing or handling the inventory. So, like I mentioned, no inventory canning cost, no need to bother about, hey, I have to get rid of my inventory if it is low selling and things like that. Then the second one is whole selling and warehousing. An interesting business model that allows you to purchase products in bulk and stock the inventory is warehousing. So, here you are basically in charge of the inventory and you are actually storing those. The whole selling business model gets you better prices simply because you are buying the product in a bulk and not making a one-off purchase, unlike the previous model that we talked about. Though you can do shipments like bulk shipments and dropshipping also. Now, this midway model, the whole selling midway model allows the business to sell goods in a large volume and when do they make a profit? Because they have huge volumes of inventory. So, the whole seller sells goods to the retailer who then sells it for a profit. You also sell goods individually on your website in order to enjoy a better profit margin. So, you can define the different channels that you want to sell your goods because you are in charge of your inventory. So, that gives you a lot of flexibility here. Now, the third one is manufacturing and white labeling. The manufacturing business model has stood its ground since decades. And this midway model gets paid to create the good. As far as white labeling is concerned, you are technically developing the product yourself. Instead, you are licensing or subcontracting it, which allows you to put your brand's name on it as if you are the owner and creator of that product. And finally, subscription e-commerce. Unlike a traditional e-commerce business where one transaction takes place, subscription business model allows the customer to subscribe to a plan in order to receive regular deliveries of the subscription box. Moving to the next slide and here I'll talk about what does an end-to-end supply chain look like? End-to-end supply chain involves an entirely integrated process from product design and procurement of raw materials and scheduling production and then final delivery of finished product to the customer. It is further extended to after-sales service and reverse logistics depending upon the nature of the business. Now, what are the different stages in an end-to-end supply chain, right? So you have to plan for your product. You have to, based on historical sales or based on benchmarking of similar products that have been sold in the past, you do demand and supply planning of the products that you want to sell or buy. Once you have made that demand and supply planning, you source and procure the materials from different vendors. So supplier selection and creation of purchase order based on your supply plan is the second step in this end-to-end supply chain process. Now, based on your purchase orders, the vendors can, like your company, can either manufacture the products in-house or they will buy it or contract it to some other vendors who are specialized in the manufacturing of this particular product that you are trying to sell. And once that shipment of goods is ready, then you have to go through in more logistics, inventory management and transportation steps. What that means is the manufacturer can send the shipments via ocean, rail or air depending upon how important the shipment is to you. Now, depending upon the mode of transportation, the cost will vary. So if you are procuring it via air, then it will be the most costly. If you are going via ocean, it will be the least costly and things like that. And that is where the transportation cost comes into picture. You have to decide how do you want to procure your goods and services from the manufacturer, whether it is in-house or contract manufacturer, so that your cost is manageable. And at the same time, you are able to fulfill the orders of your customers. And then inventory management, when you are getting the shipment from your manufacturing location, you have to put it in some warehouse location where you want to sell your products from. Let's say, for example, you are procuring goods and services from, let's say, India or Vietnam, and you want to store it in US, then you have to decide where exactly you want to store it, what are the storage space, what is the cost of storing the inventory, and are you able to track your inventory systematically so that you are able to track each and every product that has come as part of the shipment. And then inbound logistics is overall procuring of inventory from your contract manufacturer to your warehouse. That entire step is called inbound logistics. Now, once you are able to secure your products into your warehouse, you are in a position to sell those products to your customers. And there can be different channels like we just discussed. It can be B2B, B2G, B2C, depending on whatever channels you are in. So you have to pick back and ship those goods from your warehouse to your customer location, depending upon whether it's a B2B channel or a B2C channel. And again, there will be transportation costs involved here. And this is called as forward logistics. And your strategy is based on the channels like online B2B and whatnot. But the end-to-end supply chain does not end here after you have sold the product and transported the product to your end customer. There is something called after-sales service. Now you have to make sure that the end customer has actually received it because it is very essential to provide a seamless customer experience so that they keep coming back to you to buy more products. That is how you will make a profit in the long run of the business. And then reverse logistics, which is the most important part of the supply chain. You have to take care if there are any returns, requests or replacements. This is very important because this is where you seal the customer confidence in your whole supply chain process. Say for example, I got a product and I don't like the product. It is damaged or it is under warranty. So I would like a seamless returns or repair experience as well because I have paid my money to buy this product from your website. So that is what an end-to-end supply chain looks like. And to optimize the end-to-end supply chain, the above components needs to be well-integrated. We cannot even a single step cannot work in silo. That is what an integrated supply chain looks like. It requires an enterprise resource planning ERP system that provides real-time information with visibility across the supply chain. There are a lot of ERP solutions in the market today. For demand and planning, you can maybe look at Anaplan JDA and whatnot. And for core ERP suppression for inventory and financials, large companies have implemented solutions like Oracle, SAP and whatnot. So depending upon the requirements of a business and what kind of software you want to implement that gives you the best possible outcome in terms of business value, you have to take a decision with your internal system, team and external implementation partner and take that call accordingly. These are some of the best approaches that can help optimize the supply chain, right? Better prediction of customer needs by implementing a demand and planning tool. Lean approach to inventory management to reduce waste and unwanted actions. This will speed up the order fulfillment process and increase inventory accuracy. Human resource planning to respond to certain changes in the supply chain, root cause analysis to identify issues in the current process and design effective solutions. Implement end-to-end benchmarking to measure the efficacy of the supply chain. Now what are the benefits of an end-to-end supply chain? With an integrated end-to-end supply chain design and visibility across the supply chain, businesses can better serve customers. The benefits are some of the benefits are like this, like you get to provide seamless flow of activities across the supply chain. You will be able to track each and every step in your supply chain if you have better systems implemented. Reducing delays with the ability to detect any issues across the supply chain. Let's say for example, there are different touch points of handovers. Say for example, your manufacturer is saying that here I have sent out the shipment from a factory, but your system is yet to receive that shipment. It's not showing on your system. So you will have to, you will have that visibility okay, even though the manufacturer is saying that here this shipment has left my warehouse, but it is yet to show in the system so you cannot take really the next action on that. So you have to make these processes very tightly integrated and provide visibility to all the handoffs in this entire supply chain. You will have better relationship with your suppliers and customers because you are able to track each and every step with these stakeholders, right? You will have complete visibility of all the steps that can reduce risks, operating cost and predict and plan to meet the needs of market changes. So essentially like having a robust system infrastructure will help you whether any kind of unforeseen circumstances like COVID or if for example, something is stuck and you are like very resilient in responding to these different market changes. And there will be transparency and ability to view blind spots. There are no offline transactions. Everything is systematic and you are able to take a call and do historical analysis of the different transactions that have taken place for your business. Reduce labor and material costs by removing waste in the process. Now moving on, this is a pictorial representation of what an endurance supply chain looked like. Like I said, you plan what amount of or what quantity of goods and services you need to manufacture or in-house or you want to give an order to some vendor or contract manufacturer depending upon the kind of business you are in. So you have to plan and align your supply chain plus resources. You can leverage any kind of software tools to create your demand plan, create your supply plan and then you create your requirement document. Then you source, based on this plan you source it and then you manage different material categories, you manage your suppliers and then you order the materials from them by cutting a purchase order, creating a materialist that, hey, I need this product lines with this quantity and this is the cost of each of these. And based on that lead time, they will make, either you are making it in-house or you are getting it done by a vendor or supplier. They will schedule the production, they will assemble the product, they will perform quality testing, everything is looking good or not. And then they will deliver the product. And this is where you have to do manager inbound logistics and warehousing where you want to get the product and store it in your warehouses. You have to plan and manage this inbound material, you have to operate your warehouses. If you are in a B2C channel, you have to open your shipment and store it in the warehouse accordingly or if you are in the B2C channel, you may not even choose to open it. And then you operate the outbound transportation. And finally, if there are any return processes, you find that after opening the shipment from your supplier, you feel like some of them are damaged, so you should have systematic return processes implemented. You receive and credit return product, refurbish or scrap return product and these are some of the processes that should have been implemented to account for this kind of processes. And finally, an event. So it's very essential that you have good reporting capabilities since you are storing all this data in your databases. You should have... And if your management is tracking different KPIs, you can create dashboards, operational dashboards and executive dashboards depending upon the requirements of your business so that you can do trend analysis of which is your based performing product or how the sales have been doing here on your recon week, month on month, things like that. Based on all this analysis, you can deploy your supply chain strategy, you can do your sales and operation planning for next year and this will give you a robust end-to-end supply chain management capability. Now I have taken a couple of examples of the large-scale e-commerce businesses where they manage their businesses in the current landscape. So first, one of the examples is Wavefair. So Wavefair is an e-commerce platform that sales furniture appliances and other home-related products. The company works with hundreds of brands such as Bosch, Kohler, Samson, Threepost and many more. On top of that, Wavefair owns and operates a few lifestyle brands, like Johnson, Maine, All-Modern, Peri-Kohl, Berkeley and etc. Lastly, the company also sells Wavefair branded items that are only available on its platform. How does Wavefair makes money? Wavefair makes money from the sale of products, installation services, advertising on its platform as well as interchange and interest fees. The company initially operated primarily on a drop shipping model. It has ever since pivoted wholesale cost business model in which it purchases items and bulk and sells them at a profit. Now, like I have been mentioning that how important back-end systems and a logistic infrastructure is essential for your e-commerce business to succeed. So let's take a look at how Wavefair manages their logistic infrastructure. Wavefair's logistics network was built specifically for the home category where items can be bulky, heavy and prone to damage. By building its own infrastructure, Wavefair reduces shipping time, minimizes damage during shipping and saves cost per shipping and bulk. The goal of the logistic investment is to get closer to today and ultimately wonder shipping on as many products as possible. The logistic network is entwined from supplier to doorstep and their logistic network comprises of three main parts, international supply chain, products from international supplier, mostly in China are aggregated at consolidation centers where they are packed into shipping containers before being transferred to ports and delivered directly to a castle gate location. What are castle gate locations? Wavefair fulfillment centers enable suppliers to forward position their inventory in warehouses close to customers and have link to day shipping. Wavefair receives fees from suppliers or using castle gate inventory management and fulfillment services. About 20% of orders are fulfilled through castle gate and this production is increasing. The remaining orders are fulfilled by Wavefair's historical method where orders are dropped shipped directly from suppliers and delivered by external carriers like UPS, Fed, etc. or any third party trucking or last mile home delivery agents. And finally Wavefair delivery network. Wavefair ships a majority of large parcels by directly managing middle mile and last mile deliveries enabling shorter delivery times, higher quality deliveries, less damage per service and more accurate delivery tracking. Next slide. The territorial representation of how Wavefair delivery network has been able to reduce the number of touches and the delivery time as compared to the traditional drop ship model for large parcel example. So as you can see in Wavefair model they have consolidated the warehouses and their docks and they do full truckload transportation for only Wavefair products and Wavefair last mile delivery agent or third party then transports the goods to the end customer in New York or wherever the customer is based on. Earlier there were multiple stops in the traditional drop ship model as you can see there were different touch points, multiple stops and carrying non Wavefair products. So this led to a lot of delay and the entire supply chain was longer than what was anticipated. So this is how Wavefair has optimized the delivery systems which is a great example of why you should have robust systems and capability to support your online e-commerce business. Moving to the next example which is Home Depot with over 2300 physical stores in North America accompanied by a strong online presence the Home Depot business model is focused on the sale of tools construction products appliances and services for home improvement projects. And how does Home Depot makes its money? Home Depot makes most of its money through sales of home improvement goods and related services. Home Depot sells a wide range of building materials decorative products, home improvement goods garden and lawn products and whatnot. And they generate massive revenue from the sale of these products. Home Depot offers professional services to its customers to its worst network of professional contractors, tradesmen, remodellers and small business owners that assist customers. They help customers to handle small and complicated home improvement projects. So this is how Home Depot make their money through sales and through their installation services and other channels, right? Now coming to their supply chain fulfillment network so Home Depot has an only channel supply chain fulfillment network. Digital is unequivocally Home Depot's fastest growing business but online sales growth is actually being facilitated by the company's brick and mortar store network. Around 40% of Home Depot's digital sales are fulfilled by the physical stores. The Home Depot retail strategy has immersed us one that combines elements of both online as well as stores channel to drive sales growth. The fulfillment option that Home Depot currently offers are BOPIS, buy online pickup and store, BORIS, buy online return to store and buy online shift to store own channel fulfillment options. So what I'm trying to get at is Home Depot has actually raised the gap between their online business and their offline distribution network by implementing an omnichannel supply chain fulfillment network and they have been able to achieve it through different methodologies like BOPIS. You can buy online and you can just come in and pick up and store and this has been implemented across all the e-commerce businesses today and then BORIS, you can buy online and you can return it in the store as well. And yeah, and they're also trying to get into other methodologies like BODFS like buy online and then deliver from store. Home Depot's omnichannel supply chain fulfillment strategy is exemplary and it hasn't just been built by a great focus on accommodating the rapid growth of its e-commerce capabilities. Rather, that home was restructured its whole supply chain network in order to integrate the experiences of each in store and online commerce. And this is a pictorial representation of one home demo experience or omnichannel home Depot experience as you would call it. They have stores which drive greater convenience and speed for customers. They have associate management and a competitive and agile workforce. They have interconnected experience. They try to create the best interconnected experience by harmonizing the experience between stores and online. This improves personalization as well as enhances website ease of use like search, user experience, et cetera. Then product and innovation, definitely if your product is not good, then you won't sell it, right? So they maintain the position as number one retailer and product authority. They optimize their assortments, advance localization and first to market approach, expand decor categories online. And they have, like I said, they make the revenue through professional services as well. They deliver their one integrated approach for the through customers that build new personalized B2B that experience fraud and assortment and expand interconnected experience for services. And of course, supply chain and delivery which is one of the most important key of the end-to-end supply chain experience. They offer fast and most efficient delivery and home improvement. They have expanded same day and next day delivery option, open and additional fulfillment centers or faster customer deliveries and whatnot. And this is one of the last examples that we would work you through which is the Uber Eats business model. Everyone knows what Uber Eats is since most of us uses Uber for our day-to-day transportation. Uber Eats has a three-sided marketplace connecting a driver or restaurant owner and a customer with Uber Eats platform at the center. The three-sided marketplace moves around three players. Restaurants play commission on the orders to Uber Eats. Customers pay the small delivery charges and at times cancellation free. Drivers are making reliable delivery sometime. The ambition of Uber Eats is to become the go-to last mile delivery platform. It started with food delivery but it aspires to become the go-to place for last mile delivery. And like I mentioned, they have this complex three-sided network dynamics between eaters, restaurants and drivers. The existing online platform gives riders and drivers additional options. Like Uber, Uber Eats distribution leverages on a solid running infrastructure which have been stretching open built over the years and a playbook to connect local and national policy makers to stabilize the service forward. And this is a pictorial representation of your customer basically places and orders Uber Eats. Uber Eats has its network with the restaurant partners. They place the orders with them and then a delivery partner will pick up the order from the restaurant and deliver it to the customer place order. Now these are some of the key challenges that are faced by firms in e-commerce space today. Data security, online identity verification, attracting the perfect customer, customer experience, seamless customer checkout and whatnot. Customer loyalty, customer should come to your websites for buying certain goods and services and not go to other customers with the plethora of options that are available to them. Converting shoppers into paying customers, keeping the prices competitive, having effective inventory management strategies. You should have the stock in place for the products that you're trying to sell through your website, right? Otherwise the customers will move to some other website. You have to keep in mind the shipping cost that you're getting from your contract manufacturers. You should have effective technology and infrastructure management. You should have effective product return and refund policies. And you should have good omni channel strategies as well so that to bridge the gap between online and offline e-commerce marketplaces. And then finally you have to invest in sustainability to make sure that you are not causing unnecessary harm to the nature that we are thriving in, right? So finally, how can an e-commerce product manager help? These are some of the roles and responsibilities of an e-commerce product manager on a day-to-day basis, right? You ensure that e-commerce sites run smoothly. There is no glitch or there is no issues with the interface that you are providing to your customers. You are able to build robust systems to handle inventory and financials. You invest in systems that provide end-to-end visibility of a given product lifecycle. You define efficient processes in conjunction with your stakeholders. You aim for a true omni channel experience. The different examples that we spoke about, everyone was investing in an omni channel experience because that is the need of the art. The demands and the feedback of the customers are heard. This is how you will make your customers loyal to your products and to your e-commerce business. Ensure that the quality of the new products are as per industry standards. Develop product strategy based on the prevalent state of e-commerce business and create your product roadmaps. You create a high level of website, mobile or functionality and deliver the optimal user experience. You should have different channels in conjunction and walking in tandem with one another. Your mobile experience should be similar to your desktop experience. You assess business developers and analyzing all the business requirements to coordinate your efforts to increase the businesses. This is how as an e-commerce product manager we can help this entire end-to-end experience seamless. What are some of the key takeaways from the presentation today? You should know what your customers want and implement in your systems with the help of your internal stakeholders like your engineering counterparts and your UX designers counterpart. You should be able to provide personalized experience to your customers so that they keep coming back to your website to order more. Finally, ensure your supply chain is agile back-to-back or robust systems and infrastructure. We saw a lot of examples of the companies who are doing this really well. That's all from today's presentation. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you so much.