 Hello Global Sustain Change Designers and welcome to our first live life event. My name is Sergio Caballero and today I have the privilege of sharing the stage with Eva Ponce. Welcome Eva. Thank you. Eva Ponce is the Executive Director of the MITx MicroMaster in Supply Chain Management as well as a Research Associate at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. She oversees the five online MITx courses in Supply Chain Management that make up the MicroMaster's program. Dr. Eva Ponce has over 15 years of experience in teaching and research in supply chain management and qualitative models for industrial engineering. Her current research focus is the design of urban distribution models with a special focus on only channel distribution strategies. She also leads research initiatives on reverse logistics and closed-loop supply chains. Welcome again Eva. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here today and welcome to this first live event for SC2X. Excellent. So let's try to review the agenda for today. Okay, so I'm going to start just with a brief welcome to SC2X. Then Eva will give an overview of the MicroMaster in Supply Chain Management. They will have again an overview of SC2X, a particular attention with the logistics of the course. Then Eva will also start a discussion about the only channel trying to focus on what are the main channels of this new trend and will also have a BN sometime for Q&A. Okay, so let me share with you some numbers about this current run of SC2X. So so far we have almost 8,000 enrolled students in our SC2X. So we have 361 verified students that come from 162 different countries. The top three countries are the US, India, and Brazil. So there are four important dates for SC2X. The first one is the enrollment. So enrollment closed in April 18. So you have friends or a family that you would like to be part of the course, please encourage them to become or to enroll in the course. And the important key date here is in 10 days, 18 of April. So the second important day is when verification closed. So if you want to be part of the MicroMaster cohort, you want to pursue the certificate. So you need to verify or become a verified student before April 25th. That's an important day for you guys. And also we have the meter exam, which is due on May 16, and the final exam, which is due on June 27. But remember that this exam, the meter and the final will be open during one week and it's a time exam. So we have also an amazing team of 12 CTAs from 11 different countries. They will help us to run this course and you will see them often in the discussion forum. Okay. So let's now give a brief overview of the program. Perfect. Please Eva. Excellent. So we deliver this program at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. This center was created 40 years ago with the main goal of creating supply chain innovation and driving it into practice. So there are three main legs in this center. The one of these legs is the research. So we have more than 15 full-time researchers at the center working in different projects very close with the industry. Outreach, this is the part of the center that collaborate directly with our partners. Our partners are companies and organizations, institutions from different industries. So we have currently more than 50 partners at the center. And the third leg in the center is education. So in education, we have been offered the supply chain management master degree for the last 20 years. And I need to say that this master degree has been ranked as number one in the world in the field of supply chain management. So we also offer PhD program in logistics and also executive education. In fall 2015, President Rafa Reif of MIT announced the first micro master in supply chain management. And since then, we started to create this program. So in terms of the micro master in supply chain management, you now that are enrolled in SC2X, you are now part of a huge community of SCX learners. So far, more than 245,000 students have been taken at least one SCX course. From those, more than 15,000 are verified learners and later I will talk more about the two kind of tracks that we offer in our courses, audit and verified. These learners are from more than 196 countries. So you can see here that most of the countries in the world are represented. And this is something that enrich this program because we have this global experience from people from all over the world. Today, we have issued more than 1,000 certificates. These are the micro master credentials. So we have more than 1,000 micro masters credential holders so far. Our students are for as I mentioned from all over the world, the most represented countries is the United States. We have more than 20% of our learners from USA. The second most represented country is India. And then we have around 4% of our learners are from Brazil, also from Mexico. Canada is another country that is well represented in the UK, United Kingdom, Spain, Germany. And then we have people from Australia, from Africa, from Asia, from many different countries and continents. In terms of the program, as I mentioned, anyone from anywhere with a laptop internet connectivity can join the program. They just need to enroll in the course and be part of this course. The micro master program includes five massive open online courses. This goes from supply chain analytics to supply chain fundamentals, supply chain design, supply chain dynamics, supply chain technology and systems, and at the very end of the five courses, we also offer a comprehensive final exam. This is a proctor exam in order to assess the knowledge of the learners before granting the certificates, before granting the credential, the micro master credential. With this credential, by itself, with a standalone credential, most of our learners are including these in their LinkedIn, applying for a job, using these to apply for a job. Also, there are some learners that are using this micro master credential to apply for a MIT master degree in supply chain management here at MIT and also at any other university that is recognizing the micro master in supply chain management as a pathway to earn credits in a master degree program. So it's also a way to accelerate to earn a master degree on campus in a university. So this about the program. In terms of the contents that we cover in this program, we started with supply chain analytics. In supply chain analytics, we review here the basic analytics models. We go through stochastic models and also deterministic first and then stochastic models. We cover these basic tools that later we are going to apply to more realistic problems. So for instance, in EC1x, we cover demand forecasting problems. We cover inventory management and transportation management. I need to say that our approach is very industry applied. It's a very applied approach. So we are trying to, every single time that we propose a practice problem or a great assignment, try to recreate a real situation in supply chain management. In EC2x, here we focus more on the design of physical information and financial flows. We cover these three main flows in a supply chain and try to give you tools and techniques that you can use in order to design this material flow, the information and the financial flow. Then once you complete these three courses, these three courses are more quantitative. Then we move to more, let's say, the real life and the complications of this real life. We bring complexity to EC3x. We introduce complexity and also exogenous forces that impact supply chains. In EC4x, we really want you to be familiar with big data, how to analyze this big data. We are also reviewing here some machine learning techniques and also enterprise resource planning, EBI, electronic data interchange, and those systems that help organizations to manage the information flows inside the organization and also in between organizations, inter-organizational solutions to manage these information flows. At the very end of the program, we offer this final comprehensive and proctor exam. In terms of the cost, the cost to follow or enroll in each course, you can enroll for free. If you want to pursue for the certificate, then you need to pay for the fee and the fee is $200 per course. Let's say that the total cost of the program is $1,200 and each course costs $200. In terms of effort per learner, let's say that they need to dedicate in between eight to 12 hours of effort every single week that we are delivering content. So the total duration of the course is 13 weeks, but this includes a week zero that is just to introduce the syllabus, the organization of the course, the logistics, and these things. Then we offer four weeks of content from week one to week four. Every single week, and this is going to happen every single Wednesday at 1500 UTC, we deliver new contents. These contents include videos, these contents include practice problems, quick questions, and we want you to review this material before going to the grade assignment. So every single week, you are going to have grade assignments. The due date for the grade assignment is two weeks, and I need to say that the deadlines are rigid. We cannot, unfortunately, we cannot extend this deadline because of individual's request because this is a massive course. So we need to be very, very strict with the deadline. And then you have a midterm. This is going to happen in week six. Before that, we give you a week off so you have time to complete all of your grade assignments, review, prepare, study, and to be ready for the midterm exam that this is going to take four hours. It's a time exam. This means it's open, it's open during one week, but once you open the exam, you only have four hours to complete this exam. Then after that, you have again four weeks of contents, one week off to prepare for the final, and at the very end of the course in week 12, you will have the final exam, again a time exam, four hours to complete the exam once you open it. And with that, you have a brief overview of the program. So I want to mention here that in the course, you will find two different environments or space. We have the learning space. In the learning space, we offer the videos, we offer the quick questions, and the practice problems. And we really, really encourage collaboration. We really love you to see in the discussion forum and post your questions, any questions you have related to a video. I do not understand well this concept or related to a practice problem or a quick question. We really encourage you to go to the discussion forum to post your question. We also love to see how your peers are helping you answering this question. We also have the amazing group of community teaching assistants helping us to, helping you to answer these questions and also the MIT staff, the course lead, Sergio, and also the teaching assistant, our teaching assistant for this course is Jack, will be there helping you answering these questions through the discussion forum. We also, for those that are pursuing for the certificate, we need to have the assessment space. We need to offer a great assignment, meet and final exam in order to assess your knowledge before giving you the certificate for this course. The question here is that this is an individual work. This is not a group work. We need to assess every individual, every single person. So that's why here we do not allow collaboration. Here we offer you the email account, a C2X help email account. And this is the way you can send us any questions related to great assignment, meet or final exam. The MIT staff, the TAs and Sergio will be here to answer these questions. This is not a way to provide tips or extra help. It's just a way if you identify anything that is not clear, any ambiguity or anything that you want to bring us related to that, this is the way to do that. Yeah. So this is mainly between the learning and the assessment space. In terms of the discussion forum, we already have you, we already introduced ourselves. We also encourage you to introduce yourself. And I really, really encourage you to use the discussion forum and to post any new related to the topic, any article or anything that you say, hey, this is very interesting. That is totally related with the contents we are reviewing a C2X. Or if you have any questions or anything that is not clear, go to the discussion forum, post your question. We have very nice thread of discussion. All of us, we are learning also from your experience, from your questions. And it's a great space also to learn from the peers, from each other. In terms of how to interact with the course, as I mentioned, for the learning space, go to the forum and use the forum. For any question related to assessment, SC2X help.mit.edu. This is the help email account that we are offering in SC2X. And for any suggestion, feedback or idea to improve the course or any material, do not hesitate to send an email to SC2X. Help email account directly to me. We are always, always directed to Sergio. We are always very happy to receive this feedback. And based on this feedback, we improve every single run that we are offering to our learners. So we really appreciate that. Okay, so this is related to the MicroMaster program. So let's go now to the deep dive into SC2X. I think we have a couple of questions about the programming in general. Sure. So the first question that we have is Sumajalab. So he's asking, she's asking, what will happen if I don't pay the verification fee after, or it's got to be before the deadline, AP25? What will happen? This is a great question. So you need to decide if you are pursuing for the certificate before the deadline. So before the deadline, you have time to go through the first weeks of materials, have a look and see if you really want to pursue for the certificate. If you want to pursue for a certificate in this round of SC2X, you need to upgrade your status to be a verified student before the deadline, the verification deadline. After this deadline, unfortunately, there is no way to earn a certificate in this round of SC2X. So after this deadline, you should wait for the next round of SC2X in order to, again, follow the course and pay the fee and pursue the course as a verified student. So you can't, unfortunately, you can't wait to the very end of the course to make your decision. You need to make your decision before April 25th, isn't it? Correct. So before April 25th, you need to make the decision. I really encourage you not to wait until the very end because the verification sometimes this process relies completely on edX platform. Sometimes there are some problems with the payment or whatever can happen. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, we cannot extend this deadline. That's why at the very beginning, we announced so many times because now is the opportunity. If you want to take the course as only the student, this is totally fine. You will have access to the videos and to the practice problem. The only difference or the main difference is that you are not going to be able to earn a certificate if you don't become a verified student. Okay. Another question is if there are any plans to offer a supply chain master fully online. Okay. Another very good question. So far, the MicroMaster program was designed as the first part pure online program, 100% program, the credential by itself. However, the master degree and in order to earn the master degree, so far this program is designed to be full-time in person. So the MicroMaster is allowing learners to accelerate the way to earn a master degree, only spending one full semester on campus instead of spending 10 months to full semester. So you only need to spend one full semester in order to earn the master degree program. Having said that, this is the program we are offering now and I would say now and for the next years, this is a question that came to us very frequently. Definitely, we are always considering new in the portfolio of education portfolio we are offering here. We always review it and consider new options. So far, I need to tell you that is 100% online, the credential, 100% in person, the master degree. This is the program we are offering now. And the blended program that you mentioned. Yes, of course. The blended program that is one full semester, only for those MicroMaster credential holders. Those MicroMaster credential holders can apply to the blended program and if they get that mission in the program, they can pursue for this master degree at MIT and also at other universities. We have universities that are also offering a blended program. Zaragoza is one of these universities. Purdue University is also an university that is offering that. Rochester Institute of Technology, University of South Florida is on their way to offer these two. Some universities in Latin America, in Australia, Europe. So there are more and more universities are recognizing the MicroMaster credential in supply chain management as a pathway for credits to earn a master degree in person so far in those universities. Excellent. So one other question from Parth. It's about if the meter and final exams are multiple choice question. This is a combination of different kinds of problems. Multiple choice, yes, checkbox questions. You might find some of them in the midterm and final exam, but you also will find numerical problems, especially in SC0, SC1 and SC2x includes always a bunch of different numerical problems and some multiple choice checkbox questions. Correct. So usually we have four problems in the midterm and four problems for the final. Out of these four problems, usually one problem with multiple questions, of course, are a combination of checkboxes or a combination of multiple choice questions. And the other three are mainly a quantitative questions. Okay. Another question is Juan Pablo. He's asking if the assignments are graded, even if he's not enrolling for the certification yet. Okay. So you wrote a good question and then we need to talk about audit and verify the student. So let's do that or do you? Okay. So let's maybe we can answer the question. Yes. During the presentation because, yeah, to answer this question, we need to talk about what means to be an audit student, what means to be a verified student. So let's go through the presentation and hopefully we are going to give you an answer. If not, let us know. Excellent. So let me dip that on the, on the SC2X on the course. So this is the team. So the team that will be helping you guys. So the first of all, the director of the MicroMaster is Dr. Chris Caplis and Eva is the executive director of the program as well. So for this particular course, we have four instructors. Chris Caplis is our main instructor, but also we have Professor Joshi Sheffi and Jarod Koenzel and also Jim Rice as instructor in SC2X. All of them are researching here at CETL. So we have course leads. So I'm going to be your course lead and also Sina Golada is going to be the course lead of SC2X. And I need to tell you that Sina Golada is behind the scenes. He's watching the event behind the scenes. That's correct. The next time maybe he will be here. For sure. So we have one TA and we have a team of 12 amazing CPAs that will be helping you in the discussion forum. Excellent. So regarding the content, as Eva mentioned at the beginning of representation, so we have eight weeks of content. So week one and two are all about to play a network design. So very modern and quantitative models. Then in week three, we introduce what is called production planning. We have a set of models there. And week four, what we cover is S&OP and also one lesson about distribution strategies. And actually one of the topics that we teach on nutrition strategies is going to be part of the discussion today in this life event. In week seven, we talk about the procurement and supply and management. And the last three weeks of SC2X, it's all about supply chain finance. At the end of the course, we have only one lesson about organization design. Do you want to comment about the tracks that we have? So there are two different ways to take a SC2X or any SCX courses as part of the micro-master program. You can be an audit student. To be an audit student, you just need to enroll in the course. And so far, that's all. There are some great assignments for audit students. The answer is yes. The only thing is that there is no certification associated with this track. But yeah, you will have also the option to have a midterm and a final exam. You can't take some great assignment. You will be graded, but no certification at the end. The other option is to be a verified student. To be a verified student, you need to complete two steps. The first step is at the very beginning of the course, if you go to the course, the main screen, you will see Upgrade. If you want to pursue for a certificate, you should click here in the green button and say Upgrade $200. So with that first thing is follow the precedent in order to pay for these $200 for the fee. And this is the administrative fee associated to generate the certificate. And the second step, and this is also very important, is to verify your identity. So first step, you click on the green button. You need to follow all of the complete your personal information plus the way you are going to complete the payment, the $200. And the second step is to verify your identity. Both steps relies on edX. So if you have any issue here, you should contact directly with edX support and they will help you during the process. There is a link here to a video that helps you with the ID verification process. Sometimes it's tricky. You just need to provide your ID card with your picture and the full name. You also need to take a picture of yourself through the webcam. These need to match because we are very fine that you are the person that you are saying the person you are. And this ID verification lasts one year. It's open for one year. It's valid for one year. Sorry, yeah. That's right. Once you do the edification, the duration is one year. So you know the specific for EC2X? If you have done for EC1X and it's still valid, you can use it. Yeah. And I also want to highlight that every single rank of any ECX course, we have a student that paid the fee, but they didn't for any reason or they forget to verify their identity or they did in the past and now expire. So you need to be very, very aware about the ID verification because at the very end of the course, if you are not ID verifying, you are not going to receive the certificate. So to receive the certificate, there are two things. Pay for the $200 and verify your identity. And of course, pass the course. And pass the course. Good point. Yes. You need to pass the grade assignment and our pass bar is the 60% in all of our ECX courses. Okay. So info at edX.org is the email account that you can use if you have an issue with the verification process. There are some benefits associated to be a verified learner. The first, and I already mentioned that is if you are pursuing for the certificate, it's the only way to earn the certificate. So you need to be a verified student to earn the certificate. Also, if you want to pursue for the MicroMaster credential, you need to pass the five ECX courses as a verified student. You will also have access to life events. This first life event is open to anyone. However, the second and the third life event is only something that we offer to verify the student. And also in the platform, it is a special section that is called supplemental material for verified student that we are offering for those students that are part of the verified track. These are the life events. And in the life events, you will have the instructors. We will discuss different topics related to the contents of the course. Sometimes we will have Professor Sheffi, Chris Kapliz, Gene Rice, Jarrod Gotzel. Sometimes we are also inviting experts from industry. We always want to bring this reality to the courses and bring the industry also to these life events. And actually for the second life event that is taking place on May 3rd, we had an expert about supply chain network design. Excellent. So Steve Ehlet from Chain Analytics, a consulting company is coming here and we will have this live event with him. And with Chris Kapliz too. Both are going to discuss about the contents. Great. Yeah. Excellent. And then in terms of the program and the courses, what I can tell you based on the we have run so far 18 courses. So based on this experience, I think that the part that I most fascinated about is the impact on individuals. So these micro master learners are creating communities, are creating study groups in very different countries. We have here the example of the people that in SC4x participated in the global challenge for the fresh connection, a simulation game we are offering in SC4x. And these people met for the very first time when they were, they were chosen to be part of this final competition and finally they won the competition. So it was really nice to see how people from all over the world meet during three days and finally they did a great, great job. And then there are spontaneous study groups in Peru, Lima, in Chicago, USA, in Singapore, in many different cities and countries. And I need to say here that Arthur, our community manager, he's doing a great job encouraging these study groups and creating this community of SCx learners. That is something that definitely we really, we are very proud of this community. In terms of this impact, just to show you some examples, Oveji, he's from Nigeria. He passed, he's verified the student that complete the whole program. And he said that the MicroMaster program helped him to connect with the reality, with the industry, and to get an employee in supply chain management. We have Paulina, Paulina is from Germany, and she completed the MicroMaster credential. Then she applied for the blended program and currently Paulina is here doing the master degree in supply chain management at MIT. So another example. So any other questions related to this part? I think we'll have one last question. Sure. Learning is asking if, if I've enrolled this course without being a verified student, so now the students, can I still be enrolled the same course in the next schedule and verify my account for certificate? The answer is yes. This is allowed to do any courses open to anyone anywhere. So the answer is yes, this is possible. So they can register as all the students many times as they want. Yes. Okay. And also here it's important to notice that even though if you are all the students, and you did all the grade assignments on the meter on the final, so you cannot become verified students before the verification deadline. You want to proceed the certificate and you have to become verified learner before the deadline. That's very, very important. Okay. I think we have no more questions. So let's talk about Omni-Channel. Excellent. So let's, we, we decide to talk about Omni-Channel today because I really just want to introduce you the concept and the main challenges and connect with the contents we are going to review in a C2X. So the main goal here is just to bring the topic, think all together about the challenges. That's why we really encourage you to use Slido. So it's just to go to this URL www.sli.do and the event code is SC2X. So please don't forget to include your name because once we receive your question we want to say, hey, Jack from whatever said, this question. So I'm going to try to introduce the main concept and challenges, but I really want to make this interactive. So we really, we are going to, during the presentation, ask you questions. Some of those questions are yes or no, yes, to have your opinion. Some of those is you need to vote for the most favorite, your favorite option among the options that we propose. Some of them are open questions that we want to have your feedback. If you provide an answer to an open question, please brief because it's important just to have one sentence what you think about the question. So let's start. In the United States, online sales are growing 15% a year. And this if we compare with the overall retail sales is a huge growing because the overall retail sales is just 1.5%. So last year online sales accounted for 7.3% of the total retail sales. So my first question to you is which areas of the design of supply chain that is the main topic we are covering in SC2X. Do you think will be impacted by the growth of e-commerce? And I propose you some of these areas like network design, procurement, distribution strategies, supply chain finance, production planning. So let's give you a one minute. Okay. I'm trying to go to the slide though and answer your questions. So you can select more than one option? Yeah. Yes, we'll have the results in some time soon. I think they are thinking and also deciding on which one is going to be the excellent area that is highly impacted by this new trend. And I need to mention that all of these options we are going to cover in SC2X. Yeah. Actually, we started the course with network design. Then we'll switch to production planning, distribution strategies, procurement and finally finance. So let's see if we have some results. Not yet. Okay. So we are waiting for the results. Let me have my vote. 32 people that already responded. In any case, I can move forward with the presentation. And then once we have the result, we can show the results. So then I want to first see a little bit of the evolution about the purchase process, the buying process, the retail buying process, trying to understand a little bit the omnichannel concept. So if we think about this traditional retail buying process and we consider a different stage from discovery is when I really realize that I need a new product. Let's say a new pair of shoes. Then the second step is to search. Search for where can I buy my new pair of shoes. Then the third one is to buy. It's just the purchase transaction in order to get the product. For a step is the delivery. If this happened in a traditional brick and mortar in a traditional retailer, typically I buy the product and grab the product with me. And finally, sometimes I need to return the product for many different reasons. That this is called the post-buy process or the return process. So we think in a traditional brick and mortar, in the traditional way to go and buy these products, we are thinking in a store and go to the store. I can't realize about I need the product before going to the store. I go to the store, I go to the different ale, see the different variety of products they are offering, pick the one that I like more, buy and grab the product with me. If I'm happy, I stay with the product. If not, maybe I come back a week after to the store in order to return the product. So what I want to highlight here is that every single part of this process happened in the brick and mortar in the traditional retail store close to the year 2000. These pure players started like Amazon, like eBay, and they started offering their products. We call them pure players because every single thing they offer happens online. So if we think again in this buy process, the discovery, the search, and the buy, all of these steps happen online. However, the delivery, if it is a physical product, we need some way to send this product to the customer. And typically in the traditional e-commerce, these companies send these to home delivery. So traditional was a home delivery just to reach the customer at their home or office or whatever they decide. If we need to return, again, some of the companies offer different options in order to return, but I need to go to a specific or a retail store or some UPS office or whatever in order to return that. So what I want to highlight here is that almost every single part for the first part happened online, and then we need a parcel company or a way to deliver the product to the customer. In 2000, we have, we started to talk about multi-channel. These are companies like Dell, like Mark and Spencer's or Sears that was a traditional brick and mortar that they decide to offer their products online. So what they did is just to offer the traditional way to go to the store, pick the product, buy the product in combination with an online channel. But the question is that this company were managing these two channels as an independent channels. They didn't combine or integrate these two channels. It's like they have the traditional channel, and they also offer the online sales channel as a different, completely different channel. After the year 2000, we saw a growth of e-commerce that was especially high after the year 2007. So my question for you here is, what do you think that happened in 2007? Why we can't see in this chart that after 2007, the growth of e-commerce increased in an exponential way. So let's see your opinion about what happened 10 years ago. Do you think that this was the extensive use of the laptops, the commercial use of the internet, the introduction of the smartphones, the enterprise resource planning system that many companies introduced, or extensive use of databases? Okay, so they will have again one minute to provide the input. Excellent. Okay, so the poll is already live. Great. And we are starting to receive some inputs. Excellent. So six persons already provided the inputs. Great. Okay, so this is more or less the behavior. So the majority mentioned the commercial use of the internet, so around 60-60%. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So the second favorite option is introduction of the smartphone, around 40% more or less. And then in the third place, we have the extensive use of laptops. And ERP system, more or less. 10% or less. So the most vote is the extensive use of internet, commercial use of internet that I fully agree with that. And also introduction of smartphones. And indeed, 10 years ago in 2007, Apple announced the first iPhone and also their companies are offering these smartphone devices. What happened is that with the use of internet and the commercial introduction of internet, definitely e-commerce growth. But after 2007, with the opportunity for anyone to buy almost from anywhere with mobile devices, and then we start talking about mobile commerce, this introduced an important difference in the behavior of the consumers and how the consumers can buy from almost anywhere. So I think that this 2007 point that we identify an exponential growth of this e-commerce is because these mobile devices and these mobile commerce, the smartphones and all of the mobile devices that we are using now are allowing us to even be more close to this online shopping search. And some of this stage that I mentioned that can happen now from anywhere. You don't need to go to a store in order that this happened. So this is an important difference. And also the number of people with internet access first thing. And also the number of people that we have now using these smartphones and these mobile devices. These make really a difference. And from my point of view is one of the main cause of this increase in the e-commerce and online sales. So also I want to come back again to the different stage in the buying process. And then what I want to highlight here is that every single stage because of these mobile devices can happen now anywhere. So we can search from anywhere. We can buy from anywhere. And if we talk about delivery, this is what happened. That we have this mess. Why we have this mess? Because every single stage can happen from anywhere. So retailers need to be ready for this challenge because it's not easy to manage these different source of orders. And at the same time, as I mentioned, consumer preferences are also changing. There are also a huge variety of options in order to reach the online customer. That means that the online customer can go and pick up the online order in a traditional brick and mortar. Or they can choose to be sent to the home or the office or to some pickup point or to the bus station. So there are many different lockers. We can find lockers in traditional brick and mortar. We can find lockers on the street, on the bus station, on the metro station. So there are many different options also to reach the customer. And then retailers need to be ready to afford that and to send these online products to these different places. So this is what's happening in an omni-channel environment. So my next question for you is I want you to think now about the main challenges of omni-channel distribution strategies in the supply chain. So we're talking about from the company perspective. From the retailer company perspective, yeah. Okay, I think we'll have some options here. Yes, I propose some options. Where to prepare the orders? How to manage the returns? Where should the order meet the customer and how to deliver to this customer? In how to deliver, I'm talking more about the different transportation options that a retailer have in order to reach the customer. So basically these are the decisions that a retailer needs to make? Yeah, these are some challenges that based on my experience within the industry we have identified. And what I want to know is your opinion about which one do you think is the most, yeah, how they quantify these challenges? Okay, so the poll is open. So we'll give you again one minute to provide your input. So again, the question is what are the main challenges for an omni-channel distribution strategy in supply chain? We'll have four options. Where to prepare the orders? How to manage the returns? Where should the order meet the customer and how to deliver? Excellent. Which one of these options do you think is the most challenging? So I have already 37 students who are answering the poll. So now the most challenging is how to manage the returns? I fully agree with that. Commercial returns is especially in certain industries like the fast fashion industry, commercial returns can be 35, even higher than 35%, which is huge. If we compare this percentage of returns with the traditional way to buy is much higher if we are talking about omni-channel environment. So I agree that to manage these returns is a new challenge for these companies and they need to take care not only of the forward flows in the supply chain, also to the returns caused by these commercial returns. So yeah, also some companies are struggling with the decision about where to prepare the orders. So this depend of the nature of the company. The companies are pure players like Amazon. Typically, they have the E-fulfillment center in order to prepare this order. If the company is a traditional brick and mortar that is a traditional brick and mortar that are moving to online sales, they can also consider to use the traditional store in order to prepare the online sales or they can use the traditional distribution centers or they just can think about to create a dedicated E-fulfillment center to prepare this order. So these are challenges. When we talk with these traditional brick and mortar and the peer players, these are decisions that they need to make in this new environment. Also which channels they want to offer to the customer because at the end some of them just offer the traditional way to reach if you buy online is home delivery. But some of them have the opportunity because they have the network of traditional retailers that can offer these as a pickup point. There are also agreements with convenience stores or other retailers in order to offer these as a pickup point. So there are many options and retailers also need to decide which options they want to offer to their customers and once they have this channel defined and these options they need to decide how they are going to deliver to the final customer. So all of them are challenges to these retailers operating in an omnichannel environment. In terms of the key challenges, let's say that this is based on the article from Bell that they really recommend you. We are going to cover this in week four of lesson two. So and you have this Bell article as part of the materials that you can review. So I really encourage you to go through the article. It's interesting and in this article they present these key challenges in terms of information and in terms of fulfillment. So information means that how we are going to communicate and how we are going to deliver the product characteristics to the customer. For instance, if we are talking about the traditional retailers, all of this information we have in the store because we go to the store and we have all of the information about the product in the store. In terms of fulfillment, we also have the product in the store. So the product is there, they have a stock of this product and we can grab the product with us when we buy it. If we think about a pure player, then the information is displayed online and typically the way to deliver the product is home delivery. But now there are different options and hybrid models. So some companies what they are doing is offering the information online. However, they are offering to their online customer the option to go to the traditional become mortar to a retailer and pick up the online order in this retailer. These are these hybrid models that you can shop online and pick up in the store. And there is also a new models, new business models like the showrooms. A showroom displays the information in the store so you can go to the store, you can touch the product, you can try the product for instance, for glasses, for clothes, for those products that really because of the features and the characteristics is good to touch and see the material or see how this product fit in your face or in your body. These companies are offering that. In these showrooms you can try the product but you cannot buy the product. You need to buy the product online and you are going to receive at home or to any other channel that they offer to deliver the online order. This is an example of this showroom is just to go to the showroom, try the product, buy online and receive at your home or any other option. And there are other examples, Nordstrom, Target, Sears, those companies are starting to offer this showroom model. So, my first question for you related to this is let's play the role that you are a traditional brick and mortar. Let's say that you are one Walmart manager working on that. Would you invest in offering online sales? This is a very easy question, you just need to answer yes or no. Okay, and the poll is open now. Yeah, go for it. Okay, we have some responses. Okay, yes, I don't need to wait more. More than 90% say yes. Exactly. So, perfect, but now is the challenging question. Main reasons for a traditional brick and mortar to invest in online sale. So, be brief please and try to include your main reasons. Okay, in this case you have to type the reason. Yes. Okay, just a short sentence. What do you think is the main reason for those traditional brick and mortars to invest in online sales? Okay, we're waiting for responses. Hopefully, we'll get some. So, we have some. Great. Increase sale channels. Yeah, definitely. This is definitely one of the reasons. Increase demand. Is there also mentioning the same time for shopping? Yes. Reduce operational costs. Reduce operational costs. Wow, this is tricky because yeah, some of these companies that are investing on that at the very beginning they are not reducing the cost. They are increasing the cost. The last mile delivery is a relevant part of the total logistic cost. So, yeah, but I agree with you that increased sales, increased demand, and competition take advantage because competitors are doing that too. You mentioned that great to catch up with Amazon. That's a good question. So, I brought here one of the examples. Walmart is investing. It's investing a lot in moving to online sales. They bought jet.com and they are also using their traditional stores to offer that as a pickup point to their online customers. But at the same time, it's fun to see how pure players are moving. So, now the question is, if you are a pure player, would you invest in offering hybrid models? I mean, shopping online and offering them to pick up in the store? So, let's see. Yes or no? This is the easy part. And then we are going to come with a more challenging one. Okay, I think the poll is open. Okay. So, the answer is yes. So, now our participant is increasing. We have so far 10. So, the vast majority is saying yes. Perfect. So, main reasons for a pure play to investing offering hybrid models? Let's type. What do you think is the main reason? I feel we don't have that poll set up. Okay. No worries. So, what is Amazon doing? Amazon started as a pure player in 1995. Recently, they bought the grocery chain Whole Foods in June 2017. So, the question I have for you is why do you think they did that? So, they bought more than 460 physical stores to become a bigger player in online grocery. Some of these online players are struggling with online grocery in particular. This was a strategy to compete with Walmart. Walmart has the network of traditional become mortars. They are offering this as a pickup point for their customer. And they can also use the traditional retailer as a place to prepare the online orders. So, this was a strategy that we saw. We are seeing now how pure players are also moving to this become more traditional space. So, these are some examples. I just want to, I think we have only one minute. Yeah. We are almost there. So, in summary, let's say that we cover the main challenges that I would say are returns and you vote for commercial returns. Information. How will customers get the information they need? So, I would say here that if you are interested in this topic, I encourage you to learn about augmented reality and how the new technology is helping also to show and display a more detailed information through online channels. Fulfillment. How to fulfill? If we think about the design of the supply chain, one of the main decisions here is where to prepare the online orders in a distribution center, in an e-fulfillment center, in the traditional become mortar or where to prepare that. And also, how to distribute this product to the final customer. Which channel should I offer? And how I should configure and design my network taking into consideration that I'm offering more than one channel? If we talk about the only channel, the key thing is we want to integrate the information in between the different channels we are offering. So, I think this is the main conclusion for this presentation. Thank you so much for your attention, for participating in this event. If you are interested in pursuing for the certificate, I really encourage you to become a verifier decision now it's time to do that. Thank you so much. Thank you Eva and thank you all for attending this live event. See you next time. Bye. Thank you.