Metaverse: a new twist for the supply chain

Technological evolution is driving e-commerce into uncharted territory. Purely online experiences have been giving way, over time, to mixed models and a growing trend towards omnichannel.

However, without having completed this transition, e-commerce seems to be looking to the metaverse and immersive experiences through technologies such as augmented reality or avatars for a new and broad field of development.

With these changes, companies are looking to serve customers in any environment, with consumers mixing channels and in a marketplace that is playing out at an increasingly global level.

The metaverse opens up great commercial possibilities and, in parallel, will involve a new logistics model tailored to a more complex customer experience and with implications that we can only glimpse now, but that will gradually generate new business models, new professional profiles and, in short, a whole ecosystem.

In particular, the metaverse will mean an evolution in the shopping experience in digital environments, which could change from being an exclusively personal act to become a group or social activity.

Likewise, the metaverse will also involve a twist on the sales customizationThe company’s business model, given the growing potential offered by new technologies to gather information, process it and offer products and services that fit like a glove to the needs and expectations of customers.

To analyze how logistics can evolve in this transformation process, the Spanish Logistics Center has organized, during the celebration of the Logistics & Automation fair, a round table to analyze the transition from omnichannel logistics to multidimensional logistics.

The event was moderated by Ramón García, general manager of CEL, with the participation of Jorge R. López, CEO of CreativiTIC Innova, Carlos Membrado, Principal Sales Consultant Logistics Cloud at Oracle, Juan Rubio, manager of Business Development and Strategy at Sending and Óscar López, general manager of FIELDEAS.

Jorge R. López, Carlos Membrado, Juan Rubio, Óscar López, and Ramón García

Online channel

During the meeting, all the speakers agreed on the importance of the online channel in the evolution of logistics management over the last decade.

Especially, e-commerce has accelerated the incorporation of new technologies in logistics activities. It has also introduced innovations in its own operations by increasing home deliveries, as well as, more recently, deliveries to consignment stores or convenience stores.

Precisely in this same sense, for Óscar López, general manager of FIELDEAS, the greatest impact that the online channel has had on logistics is related to returns and the need to seek more transparent and efficient supply chains.

According to Lopez, e-commerce operators and retailers have seen the need for solutions that allow them to “have complete control and visibility of the entire logistics and transportation process,” both for B2C and B2B services.

The CEO of FIELDEAS assures, based on the experience accumulated in a company that works with five of the main European operators, that “the metaverse is going to have a great impact on supply chain management, especially because of the possibilities it opens up as a bridge between virtual worlds and the real world”.

Óscar López, and Ramón García

In this sense, Lopez believes that metaverso constitutes an ecosystem that enriches the shopping experience, even creating new commercial experiences. For this reason, he considers it very important that actions in the virtual world have their correlation in the physical world, which implies new monitoring and visibility needs.

Logistics will be the essential link between the metaverse and physical reality, making it possible for transactions carried out in the virtual world to have their counterpart in real life, thanks to a model in which transparency and collaboration will be key.

It is precisely the visibility tools that have made it possible to adapt the supply chain to a more digital, transparent and collaborative environment, more adapted, therefore, to a world in which consumption patterns have changed radically and in which the customer has been placed at the center of any business activity.

In the metaverse, full supply chain visibility will also play an important role in combining the best of the virtual world with the physical experience.

Jorge R. López, Carlos Membrado, Juan Rubio, Óscar López, and Ramón García