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DEFINITION
E-commerce distribution (split-case distribution): Breaking, or opening, cases of consumer goods at the distribution center or warehouse, rather than shipping full cases of goods to retail stores, where consumers assemble their selection of products. Individual items from a case are shelved in a warehouse, where warehouse workers act as pickers to assemble and package products a consumer has ordered.
E-COMMERCE has changed the way businesses sell, package and ship consumer goods, and as a result, it has put pressure on information technology staffs to help online retailers fulfill customer orders.
"Until recently, order fulfillment hasn't been an overriding concern of 'e-tailers,' but it's starting to be viewed as a significant differentiator among their customers," says Greg Runyan, a senior analyst at The Yankee Group in Boston. "Now that everybody has sophisticated and intelligent Web tools that help customers have a personalized and unique shopping experience, the question is, 'How effectively can you fulfill your promises?'"
IT people are key players in e-commerce fulfillment because they handle the vital inventorycontrol and warehouse-management software that allows e-commerce operations to sell and distribute items one or two at a time. In traditional retail, IT's role is less critical because most companies ship consumer goods in bulk to retail stores.
Much of the change in approach involves split-case distribution - a logistics term that means cases of goods are split open on the receiving dock and the individual items from the cases are stored on shelves or in bins in the warehouse, according to Alex Zelikovsky, chief logistics officer at San Francisco-based Reflect.corn LLC, which sells customized beauty products for women at its Web site.
Changing Centers to Stores
"In the past, the classic distribution systems sent cases to a store. The store opened the cases, took the...