The world is facing a crisis. The COVID-19 outbreak has expanded and grown into a pandemic that has devastated nearly every country in the world since the initial outbreak in late December, 2019 in Wuhan, China. In the U.S., lives have been upended due to the lockdown in the economy and infrastructure. Lives are being upended all over America, even in parts of the country that have been less directly affected by the virus itself. The resilience of its people and the economy is being tested like never before. But thankfully, a number of industries and companies are stepping up to meet the challenge and keep our society in working order, despite the costly effects of the coronavirus. There are still critical elements of everyday life that have to be maintained. One of those crucial needs is transportation and shipping.

A Look Into the Ecommerce Revolution

Ecommerce has transformed our way of life, even before the coronavirus put a stranglehold over traditional economic forums, such as retail, dine-in food establishments, and even more. In fact, it is fair to say that our very way of life has been totally transformed by the advent of ecommerce. It is also true that most of us are familiar with having everything from books and electronics to our groceries delivered directly to us. Due to the fact that COVID-19 has developed into a pandemic, it is generally agreed upon by those in the medical and scientific field that the best general practice we can employ is social distancing. What better way to achieve healthy, safe social distance than to make sure we can live our lives as normally and comfortably as possible without having to risk going into the world? Of course some trips into the world may be necessary, but not compared to just ten years prior. Indeed we are, in many ways, primed to adjust rather well to this new standard of living.

Delivery is a fantastic way to limit our exposure to each other, whether we're having food or groceries delivered, or, even more importantly, the transportation of medical materials. It's not a simple task to transport lab samples, sensitive equipment and other care items. Shipping such materials requires strict monitoring, which means tracking the location of the transport vehicle as well as the contents themselves. This detailed monitoring demands advanced technology and service providers. 

When you look closely at the data, it becomes immediately apparent that ecommerce is on the rise, and in fact has been for a while. The COVID-19 global pandemic has simply ushered it into its inevitable dominance much sooner than previously predicted:

• In North America, primarily the U.S. and Canada, online orders for web-only online retailers increased 52% compared to 2019 just over the two week period of March 22 through April 4. 

• In general, revenue for web-only retailers reported that their revenue in the U.S. and Canada was up 30% year over year for the period.

• According to the Emarsys/GoodData tracker, the number of online orders from store-based retailers in the U.S. and Canada were up 56% year over year for the 2 weeks of March 22 through April 4. 

• And finally, online sales for that group during that period grew 43% compared with March and April of 2019.

Shipping and Transportation is the Lifeblood of Ecommerce

What we are seeing right now is drastic increases in web activity and online sales over a very short period of time. This rocks the classic "supply and demand" scales in a dramatic way that is leading many in the shipping and transportation industry to adapt and meet the changing needs of people who are increasingly under shelter-in-place or stay-at-home orders.

One area that we have seen an intense spike in activity for is that of online grocers and food purveyors. The revenue for online grocery has skyrocketed due to shoppers stocking up on essential items. Grocery sales online are even higher than overall ecommerce sales. According to food marketing and sales consulting firm Brick Meets Click: 

• Online grocery sales in the U.S. for all of March were up 233% compared with August 2019 

• Symphony RetailAI found that online traffic has increased 300% for some grocery retailers. 

• In-store traffic, unsurprisingly, is down 45%. 

• Even when inspecting online sales in general, Adobe Analytics reported a 25% average increase per day in U.S. online sales during March 13 through 15 compared with March 1 through 11.

So we can see here, from some quick number crunching, that the world is changing, and has been for quite a long time now. The necessary adaptation of the shipping industry may be a challenge, but some companies are far from unprepared. 

The Tech and Companies Leading the Revolution

As is so often the case in today's incredibly advanced world, machine-to-machine communication can sometimes post an even more critical factor than the actual human beings involved in transportation. By extension, the transportation process often involves signal loss where GPS is obstructed or otherwise inaccessible. Global Site ID (GSID) from LocationSmart is a technology that works as a kind of insurance to keep the monitoring process alive and well by working around the given limitations of GPS technology itself.

LocationSmart is a leading service provider for top-performing location-based services for tracking materials and ensuring their delivery is monitored at each step of the shipping process. But it's not just the shipping process that poses a significant challenge to monitoring. Storage facilities, urban canyons and containers can sometimes block GPS signals from getting in or out. When a shipping company attempts to access location information on a package or device with an obstructed GPS signal, GSID acts as an automatic fall back for giving device insights.

One of LocationSmart's clients, a very prominent shipping company, uses LocationSmart's cloud-based application program interface (API) platform to securely augment its GPS location capabilities without needlessly taxing device performance. Generally speaking, LocationSmart's API-based approach called Location-as-a-Service (LaaS) offers a more efficient way of monitoring and tracking shipments by leveraging the power of the cloud as opposed to power-consuming and processing-intensive device-based approaches.

We were already well on our way to adopting a primarily ecommerce way of shopping prior to this insidious outbreak of COVID-19. That's the fact, no other way around it. And now what this pandemic has shown us is that we can indeed adapt, survive and thrive in this changed landscape. A new way of shipping and handling has allowed for this adaptation. With greater shipping traffic, the world is seeing both more packages and more vehicles in transit. LocationSmart is a top provider for the most secure services tailor suited for such a need. Package security and GPS data fail-safes are priority number one in this new world, and in this new life.