Retail’s Next Mile: Managing Risk as Fulfillment Moves Inside the Home

Executive Viewpoints

By Jim Wetekamp, CEO of Riskonnect | Published by Retail Touchpoints| September 30, 2026

Same-day delivery has become the baseline expectation for customers, and in-home delivery is rapidly becoming standard rather than a premium.

Eighty percent of consumers now expect retailers to offer same-day delivery. For retailers, the question is no longer whether to offer these services; it’s whether they’ve built the operational foundation to do so without exposing the business to avoidable cost, operational disruption and customer experience risk.

Meanwhile, the final phase of the fulfillment process accounts for 53% of total shipping costs. Retailers are being pushed to move faster, even as the cost of getting orders to customers continues to rise. That combination leaves very little room for disruption.

In-home delivery raises the stakes. Fulfillment now extends into environments retailers cannot control, where variability is higher, and expectations are more personal. A routine delivery becomes a direct reflection of the brand, and when something goes wrong, the impact is immediate.

Faster delivery also compresses execution. Small disruptions propagate quickly across the network and land directly with the customer.

The result is a more exposed operating model, where execution and customer trust are tightly linked. That exposure is difficult to see clearly when operational and risk signals are managed as separate functions. Closing that gap requires shared visibility into how disruptions start and what they ultimately cost.

Read the full article in Retail Touchpoints for five things retailers can do now to close the gap between risk management and operations.