With the rise of e-commerce and the emergence of new players in the retail sector, an industry that seemed doomed to disappear with the digital era has been revolutionized:

Thanks to the emergence of these new players, this industry is more alive and buoyant than ever; thus, being driven to innovate and evolve. This innovation has been steered by retail giants, which have greatly improved the customer experience in e-commerce, putting the courier industry in check and forcing it to reinvent itself: last mile delivery.

Last mile delivery is the Anglo-Saxon term that has been coined to refer to the delivery of goods or services purchased by the consumer at the time and place of his choice. This part of the delivery process is the most expensive and inefficient, and therefore poses a challenge that forces us to rethink the future of last mile delivery. The transformation of the industry includes:

• New technology: from drones to autonomous vehicles to robotic automation, technologies will be integrated throughout the entire shipping and delivery process to increase efficiency and reduce costs that can result, for example, from eventualities such as damaged packages.
• Intelligent delivery planning: During the delivery process, it is often not the   journey between two points that takes the longest to deliver, but the difficulty in finding an unloading site or where to stop, walking to the site and the actual process of delivering the package. To increase the efficiency of this process, new route planning systems will begin to emerge that locate optimal unloading points and more efficient routes.
• Urban micro warehouses: with the development of new same-day delivery models, there is a growing number of companies building micro warehouses in city centers, allowing them to shorten the execution times of their daily operations.

Freight forwarding and last mile delivery represent a huge growth opportunity for both delivery companies and new players. The key to the success of both will lie in the strategic alliances developed and the proximity to the consumer that they are able to maintain.

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