London’s eDelivery Conference

This autumn, industry leaders in logistics and supply chain management will gather at the inaugural eDelivery Conference, in London's Hammersmith. The one-day, peer-led conference, held in conjunction with the annual Internet Retailing Conference, will bring together the online retail professionals "behind the buy button". Open to retailers, vendors, suppliers, and consultants from across the industry, this conference seeks to connect the firms that do the selling with the firms that arrange the delivery work.

eDelivery

The organisers of the conference, eDelivery, are a trade publication aimed at the professionals who support multichannel retail. The bimonthly publication focuses on the experts in operations, logistics, warehousing, and customer support who make retail possible via many different channels – such as online stores, telephone sales, and brick-and-mortar stores.

eDelivery is a title from InternetRetailing, a publication for European multichannel retailers. This year, InternetRetailing will hold its 10th annual Internet Retailing Conference, a success story that inspired the launch of its partner conference, the eDelivery Conference. The inaugural eDelivery Conference goes behind the scenes of multichannel retailing and looks at the logistics, supply chain, and operations professionals who carry out the delivery work that makes the whole system work with speed and precision.

The Conference

The conference follows an unusual ‘three-note keynote’ presented by three C-level executives from Shop Direct, the UK’s fourth-largest online retailer. After the keynote, the conference is split into different tracks, or themes. The three themes for 2015 are: Growth; Fashion and Apparel; and The Non-Stop Sales Cycle. For each track, a series of speakers will give half-hour presentations throughout the day. Attendees can choose to attend only the presentations from a single track, or mix and match. For example, they could attend a Track 1 presentation like, "Localise to Globalise: Driving eCommerce in Asia" from 11:20-11:50, and then attend a Track 3 presentation, such as this year’s "Improve the Quality of the Information Provided to the End-Customer During the Delivery Process," from 11:55 to 12:25, and learn how different aspects of delivery work affect the consumer-retailer relationship.

The Goal

The eDelivery conference is set up to discuss how logistics, operation, and supply chain firms can best "fulfil the multichannel promise," as the conference’s website states. Basically, multichannel retailing offers many avenues for consumers to buy and order goods: including in retail stores, on websites, through catalogues, or via mobile phone. With all those methods of buying and ordering, e-commerce has skyrocketed, making the job of those tasked with delivering the goods much more complex.

The eDelivery conference focuses on the people "behind the buy button" – in other words, the people making the concept of multichannel retailing a reality. The conference’s presentations and exhibitions explore how logistics, supply chains, and operations firms can make delivery work smarter and more harmonious in conjunction with multichannel retailing.

Norman Dulwich is a Correspondent for Haulage Exchange, the leading online trade network for the road transport industry in the UK and Europe. It provides services for matching delivery work and to buy and sell road transport in the domestic and international markets. Over 4,000 transport exchange businesses are networked together through their website, trading jobs and capacity in a safe 'wholesale' environment.

Writer and Online Marketing Manager in London.