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Business Results

Green Delivery, Greener Profits: Delivering standards that enhance the brand experience.

At A Glance

UA's Client faced significant supply cost increases during the COVID-19 pandemic, threatening its mission of environmentally conscious growth. To address their issues, they engaged the United Alliance (UA) to devise a roadmap for sustainable, profitable growth. A key focus was their customer delivery operation, where the existing delivery network was overly complex, inefficient, and ineffective. United Alliance's role was to consult, develop, and execute a strategy to optimize this part of the supply chain, aligning it with the client's broader mission.

The Situation:

United Alliance worked with the e-commerce consumer products client to create a strategy for sustainable revenue growth. Although their product was in high demand, the company faced eroding profit margins due to rising supply chain costs, which also threatened its core environmental mission. With products sourced from Asia and the promise of free delivery, they needed a strategy to manage costs and maintain profitability.

The Ask

United Alliance was asked to curate a pipeline of "value creation" initiatives to support the Client's multi year profitable growth targets. These initiatives focused on cost savings, revenue generation, and cash flow improvements. United Alliance was also enlisted to work with client associates to plan and execute the initiatives, leveraging an "apprenticeship" approach to help clients learn and sustain effective strategies. In the logistics operation, the goal was to find cost-saving opportunities and improve customer experience.

The Solution:

The environmentally conscious e-commerce client had an opportunity to align its delivery operations with its core values. Although the company promised customers delivery within seven days of the order date, the actual delivery time was typically less than three days. This presented the possibility to redesign the delivery network to use more eco friendly options and better align with customer expectations. These efforts allowed the Company to operate more efficiently and aligned its delivery network with its core values, reinforcing its commitment to environmental sustainability and philanthropic mission.

Testing the Eco-Friendly Delivery Model:

The Company's 60-day pilot tested eco-friendly delivery, showing minimal impact on delivery times and no customer complaints. This led to the decision to expand this strategy across the U.S. market.

Real Impact

Optimization 

  • The first-year cost savings from optimizing the Company’s US delivery network amounted to $1.2 million, over 10% of the category's annual spend.

  • This opportunity's trajectory suggested it could save over $5 million annually within five years.

Growth & Expansion

  • With these savings, the Company invested in a branded electric vehicle (EV) delivery fleet to boost brand exposure, improve delivery
    efficiency, and enhance customer experience.

  • Given the project's success, United Alliance provided additional expertise to support the implementation of the EV delivery fleet.

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