When you’ve been in the logistics business as long as we have (more than 25 years), you see a lot of trends come and go. You also see a lot of change and growth.

As each year comes to a close, we like to take a few minutes to reflect upon the changes in our business, as well as our industry, before we leap into the New Year full force.

This year, we thought it would be fun to do that reflection period a bit more outwardly. So, stick with us a we recount a few of the ways our industry evolved in 2015 and a few of the things we’re looking forward to growing with well into 2016.

New technologies
Exciting, innovative technology is usually a given for industry changes and the logistics industry is no different. A few notable changes we witnessed this year include expansions for RFID and wearable tech for warehousing and a big announcement for an upcoming product: iBubble Wrap.

With the help of these technologies, logistics and warehousing providers can streamline their services and offer better rates to their customers.

Changes to guidelines
As you may have read about earlier this year on our blog, the NMFC changed their classifications for freight vs. dimensional weight. This change altered a few transportability components for shipping freight like density, handling, stowability, and others.

This evolution to the standards is important, because adhering to the guidelines and sorting freight by classification could allow shippers to increase their bottom line. Likewise, classifying cargo into a single category could keep shippers from increasing their revenue.

Growth for ecommerce
In 2015, ecommerce accounted for 11.85 percent of revenue for 3PLs, and that’s expected to grow in 2016 once again (upwards of 20 percent of the revenue is the projection). This is because more and more retailers are shifting to ecommerce models with the ever growing percentage of shoppers fulfilling their needs online.

Leveraging omni-channel fulfillment
With ecommerce growth, comes the need for omni-channel fulfillment adoption. This model enables retailers to fulfill orders with accuracy and efficiency, keeping operating costs at a minimum and the shipping costs to their customers as low as possible, as well.

While this model is still relatively new within our space, this fulfillment option allows established retailers to keep up with the growth of ecommerce in a way that still allows their company to grow.

Getting to the future together
At King Solutions, it’s our mission to bring our customers with us into the future, even when that means adopting new guidelines, technologies and models, and changing the way we do business. While we know that these technologies and additions are nowhere near done changing and growing, we’re looking forward to following each of them throughout 2016. Want to learn more about how you can evolve your business along side ours?