Australia Post China Direct
Australia Post reaches Chinese Daiguo’s and domestic Chinese customers in under 4 months through cross-border, direct-to-consumer eCommerce Offline2Online outlets and web stores.
China Direct Overview
Cross-border eCommerce (CBEC) is a rapidly growing sector of eCommerce especially for the China market. Products such as food, cosmetics, health and nutritional products and speciality goods from Australia result in over 37% of China’s $100B plus cross-border eCommerce spend.
Australia Post took advantage of a lucrative opportunity by leveraging its standing in the minds of Chinese citizens and tourists alike as a highly trustworthy, reputable brand, to establish its own direct-to-consumer cross-border eCommerce channel.
The newly developed channel combines physical stores in key locations with an eCommerce website, enabling both Daiguo customers and Chinese domestic customers to purchase leading Australian brands and ship the product directly to homes in China.
Implementing a multi-channel cross-border eCommerce solution had its challenges including stock management of both point-of-sale and integrated eCommerce websites, independent store control, promotions, sales attribution and complex shipping logic. Requiring the solution to be live, in market, in under four months made it near impossible.
The Goal
To rapidly deploy an omni-channel marketplace that combined POS with an online marketplace enabling customers to order and ship product using Australia Post’s Commercial Shipping channel
Marketplace Type
Key Features
- Product Catalogue
- Boxing logic algorithm
- Australia Post Shipping Integration
- Integrated POS
- Infinite Aisle
- Offline to Online sales
Implemented By
- Omnyfy
Customisations
- Custom boxing logic solution
- Custom multi-address checkout
- Custom Web-POS integration
- Custom Multi-Warehouse, Multi-Location solution
What we delivered
Australia Post’s China Direct and Global Logistics teams, required a solution that was fast-to-market with comprehensive multi-vendor commerce and drop-shipping capabilities, enabling Australia Post to rapidly test the overall solution in markets like Chatswood, Box-hill, Eastwood and Melbourne CBD. A primary team objective was to identify key success factors that could support a wider roll-out of the solution across more stores throughout Australia.
Australia Post required a solution that would allow it to test the cross-border concept and ideas quickly, while delivering a great experience for customers, and being easy enough to use by in-store staff. The China Direct product also required significant thought and alignment with the cross-border eCommerce rules and regulations of China, ensuring that the parcels that were delivered were compliant, guaranteeing timely delivery.
For operations and project delivery, taking the project to market required technology that integrated and aligned with existing legacy platform requirements and the comprehensive security standards of Australia Post. The solution had to align with existing logistics and partner delivery systems and strict standards relating to data-and platform security, while also needing to meet a large set of functional requirements both in Point-of-Sale as well as through online commerce.
In order to deliver a solution of this scale within the go-to-market timeframes, Australia Post engaged Omnyfy to design and implement the project, keeping with a long-standing engagement between the two organizations delivering multiple marketplace solutions together. Omnyfy implemented a multi-channel, cross-border eCommerce solution enabling multi-store inventory, POS integration and a complete eCommerce store in under 4 months, leveraging the Omnymart Multi-Vendor Marketplace Platform.
Results
The solution enabled the ChinaDirect marketplace to deliver near autonomous, self-service shopping for Chinese customers in-store and online, using key technologies such as a smart boxing logic, which dynamically processes multiple shipping combinations based on China’s complex custom legislation. Australia Post staff were able to sell to customers instantly, without any knowledge requirements of the complex shipping rules, enabling lower staff costs and facilitating online direct-to-customer purchases all within the Omnyfy platform.
Australia Post’s China Direct service has realized significant advantage with the Omnyfy platform, by enabling rapid go to market and a test and learn environment, establishing a strong foundation on which to build out its future capabilities.
Omnyfy’s Marketplace Platform enabled China Direct to accelerate our go-to-market significantly while offering a platform that could readily accomodate rapid changes to our business model.
