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Next year, the government will still aggressively develop the infrastructures. This commitment is deemed to be able to boost growth and stimulate logistics industry, including road-based land transportation.
Indonesian Logistics Association (ALI) Chairman Zaldi Ilham Masita said that until the end of the year, road-based logistics business would grow around 10% compared to last year’s growth. Next year, the growth is predicted to be around 8% to 9%. This figure is still higher compared to economic growth that is projected to be at 5.3%.
Zaldi admitted that the 10% growth was not much higher compared to the growth of logistics business in the previous years, which was around 12% to 14%. “Nevertheless, we still must observe the prospects of logistics business in 2020," Zaldi said (Detik.com, September 3, 2019).
One of the main drivers of logistics growth is e-commerce. The transaction value of e-commerce keeps swelling. The United Nations recorded that global e-commerce sales grew 13% to approximately $29 trillion in 2017.
Business-to-business (B2B) transactions kept dominating by contributing 88% to the total online sales. However, business-to-consumer became the segment with the highest growth, which was 22% to $3.9 trillion in 2017, as cited from Sindonews.com (September 29, 2019).
This data shows the large opportunity for logistics industry or courier services in the digital era. The Indonesian Logistics and Forwarders Association (ALFI) also predicted that the overall potential growth of logistics business can reach more than 30% by 2020.
ALFI Central Executive Board E-commerce Compartment Head Yan Henry Joewana said that the overall growth of logistics sector could reach Rp40 trillion or more every year.
The business potential of logistics sector has also been acknowledged by East Ventures, the venture capital firm that gives early-stage funding to tech startups in Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and Japan. According to East Venture Partner Melisa Irene, logistics has a large potential to be developed by startups in Indonesia, aside from new retail sector.
New retail is a concept where the online and offline platforms are merged. “Meanwhile, the most potential businesses in logistics sector are courier services and Waresix (online warehouse rental),” Irene said. (Antara, May 16, 2019).
Amid its development, logistics sector still faces various challenges. As cited from elogistik.id (October 24, 2017), the challenges vary amid the development of e-commerce, starting from ensuring that the customer receives the goods on time, minimalizing or even eliminating the chance of the goods getting damaged, to providing reverse logistics.
Reverse logistics is needed when the customer wants to return the product because it is damaged or because they want to exchange it with a product of another type, size, or color.
Technology is also increasingly used to easily monitor logistics. Various media, such as email, newsletter, social media, advertisement, short message, and phone call, are used to communicate with customers and give the latest information about the status of their deliveries.
As part of the logistics industry, PT Serasi Autoraya (SERA) through SELOG makes various effort to enhance its performance to boost economic growth. SELOG offers various end-to-end logistics services, including courier services. Generally, the express courier services are divided into standard service and solution service.