Sri Lanka’s e-commerce crossroad

Wednesday, 1 April 2020 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

As Sri Lanka prepares to enter its second week under curfew, and realisation starts to dawn on the world at large that the COVID-19 pandemic is not a problem that is simply going to melt away, sooner rather than later businesses are going to have to start preparing for the ‘new normal’.

What this means to each individual business of course varies, but the one certainty is that it is going to be a fairly drastic shift away from how things were. This column has previously spoken of the benefits of ‘working from home’ – at the time still a fanciful notion borne out of temporary necessity rather than any real corporate will, but one that may soon have to be given more serious thought.

One industry that is being dragged kicking and screaming into the ‘new normal’ is the supermarket retail sector. In the span of a few weeks the entire sector has been forced to transition from a brick and mortar-based industry to one almost exclusively based on home delivery.

And what has become increasingly clear during this time is that, to Sri Lanka’s major supermarket chains e-commerce was little more than an afterthought. And COVID-19 has been a rude awakening in more ways than one.

The main issue as it stands has surrounded capacity management and the recalibration of supply chains. All of the country’s major supermarket chains are geared towards processing thousands of orders a day, but problems have arisen when those very same orders appeared predominantly online and through phone lines.

According to industry experts, this has created bottlenecks, with some websites unable to handle the increased traffic, and phone lines constantly engaged. Branch managers too have had to juggle between catering to the wider demand, while at the same time ensuring the needs of those within a couple of kilometres radius of their branches are also met. A backlog of orders was inevitable.

Going forward things aren’t going to get any easier for these chains, as even once the worst of this pandemic passes us by a significant proportion of the population is still going to feel unsafe heading back to brick-and-mortar outlets. Home delivery, one that is primarily online-based, is going to be the new normal. And supermarket chains have to start preparing for that now.

On the technical front that means a revamp of their online servers, as well as a reworking of the sites themselves. Facilities such as smart tracking and automated stock management, to name a few, should be de rigueur. But most important is a significant upgrade in cyber security.

Up to now the lack of adequate cyber security measures on the vast majority of supermarket websites has, thankfully, not been exploited. This is mainly due to cyber criminals in general having bigger fish to fry, so to speak, with the limited traffic on such websites not worth the effort. But if online shopping is going to take centre stage in the months ahead, the more nefarious amongst us in society will soon come sniffing. And supermarket chains need to be ready.

Ultimately this a defining moment in the history of Sri Lankan e-commerce – an opportunity the industry let slip at the first time of asking, but one they simply cannot afford to let go of a second time around.