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Without sound reverse logistics management, your business might be harboring hidden costs and many uncertainties that threaten long-term success. Every business has to deal with returns. But treating them as an afterthought is not the best approach. Here is what you need to know about the high cost of reverse logistics and how your business can better maximize its results.

eCommerce has evolved to become the preferred form of retail for many types of goods and services. According to a recent report by Adobe, the COVID-19 pandemic boosted online shopping in the U.S. by $183 billion, a 42% increase in 2020 over the prior year.

While no one needs to be reminded how much has been changing across our industry in 2020, it’s useful to keep looking into HOW things are evolving and learning about what everyone is doing differently as either a reaction to events, or to get ahead of them more pro-actively.

At Newcastle Systems, the large variety of industries over which we receive orders gives us an interesting vantage point from which we can see how things have evolved quite a bit this year. Today we thought it would be useful to share some of what we have been seeing and what we might expect because of it going into 2021. To be brief – you’ve been incredibly innovative and creative this year.

Back in March when it became clear that we would be in for a very unpredictable year ahead, we were quick to point out that anyone who was not already good at E-Commerce would now need to be or disproportionately suffer from the slowdown in activity. Four months into the crisis, that seems more true than even we had considered.

When we started to realize that the current crisis was going to be much more than a small hiccup in our year, one of the things we discussed internally was that we would likely see a large bump in E-Commerce growth because for many businesses in some industries it would become the only way they can reach customers while their traditional channels were greatly reduced if not entirely closed – temporarily or permanently.

This week we are sharing a guest blog by Chris Crane of Excelsior Integrated.

Improving your product delivery can have a substantial impact on your customer satisfaction and overall success. If you want to grow your business, then you will want to evaluate your shipping methods, among many other aspects that can delay your products getting to your customer's front door.

The digital revolution that is transforming the broader economy continues to shape distribution models as well. Increasingly business distribution centers are evolving to serve customers directly in addition to their more traditional roles as distributors for retailers and resellers.

Larger businesses are leading the charge to transform their own warehouses into world-class distribution centers. However, smaller businesses find it difficult to match their efficiency and speed with similar facility and systems investments. This disparity begs the question, “How can smaller companies keep up?” The best way to stay relevant is to outsource these non-core functions to better qualified partners instead of trying to match what large companies are doing.

Reverse logistics is already a fast-growing element of manufacturing and distribution, but lacks the wider understanding it deserves. As a result, many businesses that are unwittingly executing on reverse logistics are missing an opportunity to make it a smooth, efficient and potentially profitable part of their business as they would expect from other process areas.

This year has been another banner year for all of us and our customers at Newcastle Systems, and with the short week we have for the Thanksgiving holiday, we wanted to take a moment to take stock and share some of what we are thankful for:

It may not feel like it yet, but the holidays are already upon us. As a third-party logistics company, if you aren’t yet planning for the rush that comes at the end of the year, then you’re already behind. When it comes to logistics, you need to be ahead of the game, and the holidays are just around the corner.