Shopify Inc., a cloud-based, multichannel commerce platform, has partnered with Uber to offer UberRUSH delivery services to Shopify merchants. Merchants enrolled in the program can offer their local customers same-day delivery. The UberRUSH program will begin with a select number of Shopify merchants located in New York City, Chicago and San Francisco and will be rolled out to additional cities over time.
To hear some tell it, the world will soon be abuzz with small drones that inspect bridges, monitor pipelines, survey crops and help assess damage for insurance claims.
Innovation of the Year: Disruptive technology products must get to market faster than ever, and a product innovation center at Flextronics reconfigures the supply chain to do just that.
Runner-up: Sears Holdings Corp.
Finalists: Intel, Fast Logistics, Zimbabwe National Family Planning Council
Getting your finished goods to customers damage-free is key, but it never hurts the bottom line to do that cost effectively and in an environmentally friendly manner. Intel accomplished all of that by changing how it packaged its products.
The shift to online retailing over the last five years finally caught up to and overran U.S.-wide delivery capacity during last year's holiday season. According to Forrester Research, online retail sales will grow by an additional 60 percent over the next five years. This kind of sea change has stretched the ability of physical networks to keep up and the shortage of drivers had further exacerbated this situation. Instead, technology has become more important to meeting retailers' holiday delivery challenges by helping to improve the productivity of existing resources and offer a greater array of delivery services being demanded by consumers.
