
As 2025 begins, retailers and logistics firms must navigate the evolving last-mile delivery landscape, particularly as more shoppers expect deliveries to rival Amazon’s. To us, this recent Gartner Market Guide for Last-Mile Delivery Technology Solutions underscores this urgency. Bringg discovered that roughly 48% of organizations struggle to meet consumer expectations for delivery visibility. Bringg also feels that this highlights a critical need for improvement alongside a broader push to meet additional customer demands like greater sustainability.
This piece serves two purposes. First, it summarizes some of the biggest insights from Gartner’s report—outlining shopper expectations as well as business last-mile priorities in 2025 and beyond. Second, the article surfaces Bringg‘s analysis of the Market Guide’s reporting—giving shippers details on what the data means, why these insights are important, and how they can take advantage of the information.
Key Takeaways:
- “Organizations consider last-mile speed and reliability as most important, but need the least improvement”
- Businesses ranked their top three improvement priorities across the supply chain as: business innovation, productivity, customer service
- When weighing a new last-mile investment, “Define your business strategy, planning, and timeline to ensure that vendors can grow with changing business needs, including those related to functional and geographic coverage,” wrote Gartner
- A holistic last-mile approach requires integrating customer priorities with core business objectives
Defining last-mile delivery and its capabilities
Gartner defines last-mile delivery technology based on three key principles.
- “Last-mile delivery (LMD) technology solutions are specialized, customer-centric transportation management solutions that focus on managing the delivery process by which a consumer receives the products they order online.”
- “LMD supports internal and external fleets, providing access to carrier networks for non-asset-based shippers. They also provide customer-engagement capabilities, providing a digitized experience to a shipper’s customer that allows end consumers to route, book, track and communicate changes to their shipments through a digital channel.”
- “LMD solutions focus on the orchestration of the delivery of products, considering more than just different fleet options, such as owned fleet versus outsourced fleets. They also focus on providing enhanced customer experience capabilities to the recipient of the goods.”
There are also a wide range of capabilities mentioned in the report that last-mile solutions offer retailers and shippers in this vital delivery stage:
- “Internal fleet versus external fleet selection based optimal outcomes”
- “Route optimization for companies using their own fleets”
- “Access to external carrier networks through APIs”
- “Customer web portal branding capabilities”
- “Visibility and live order tracking”
Where businesses need to do better for customers
It’s no secret that many shoppers want their shipping experiences to rival Amazon’s. However, most companies don’t have inventory spread across hundreds of warehouses and tens of thousands of employees to sort, pick, and ship stock. They also lack the technology infrastructure to mirror the delivery giant’s quick and transparent operations.
Gartner asked logistics operators to outline the investments they needed to make to keep up with customer demand: “According to the 2023 Gartner Last-Mile Operations and Customer Expectations Survey, speed (90%) and reliability (85%) are by far the aspects of last-mile operations that organizations considered as most important.
“However, the same study also showed that, when it comes to meeting customer expectations, organizations need the most improvement in areas such as flexibility, supplier diversity, visibility and sustainability.”
It also reported, “LMD vendors are increasingly putting more development efforts in extending their carrier library and connectivity options, providing more flexibility and service options to shippers.”
Retail and logistics industries made great strides in speed and reliability to keep up with consumer expectations set by companies like Amazon and Walmart.
However, what’s the cost of these efforts? For example, pushing for more speed and reliability may reduce carrier or delivery window options.
According to Gartner, “LMD vendors are increasingly putting more development efforts in extending their carrier library and connectivity options.”
Bringg’s analysis: Three of the four improvement areas—greater flexibility, supplier variability, and visibility for their teams and customers—fall under the umbrella of operational efficiency. It’s clear that as consumer expectations continue to increase, shippers have to improve these core capabilities.
They should address these challenges not only for their customers but for their businesses overall. The retailers and shippers that don’t meet these operational demands could experience higher costs and/or lower productivity than they would if they made a few savvy last-mile investments to improve performance.
How experimentation meets major business priorities
Gartner’s survey respondents pointed to three primary areas of business-level improvement: business innovation, greater productivity, and improving the customer experience.
Gartner also outlined specific tactics retailers and shippers use to stay competitive among those top three priorities:
- Smaller parcel shipments: Improve packaging utilization and parsing orders to take advantage of lower shipping rates
- The expansion of micro-fulfillment: Regionalize specific inventory to shorten delivery times and costs
- Measuring customer satisfaction: Use analytics to pull insights from reviews, returns, and other customer data
- New fulfillment methods: Invest in “green delivery,” pickup in store, and locker pickup
Bringg’s analysis: Any of the above tactics, and many not listed, could be considered “business innovations” or experimentations if a company doesn’t already employ them. When successful, these innovations lead to greater productivity for the business and customer experiences that consumers want. We believe the first business priorities Gartner uncovered can optimize the second two.
Everything is connected.
All this means that many companies will test new strategies with last-mile technologies in 2025 and beyond. The savviest retailers and shippers will satisfy business and customer needs with a few great infrastructure innovations (or maybe even one).
Reciprocal relationships across the last-mile
Bringg’s analysis: Retailers and logistics service providers (LSPs) across the last-mile landscape shouldn’t separate customer priorities from business priorities. Again, everything is connected.
“These are not standalone goals—they are deeply interconnected,” said Bringg CEO Guy Bloch. “True innovation drives efficiency while enhancing customer satisfaction. It’s not always about massive transformations; sometimes, the most meaningful progress comes from pragmatic, impactful changes that elevate operations and experiences simultaneously.”
The changing last-mile priorities for both consumers and businesses also impact the features that last-mile technology providers build.
“The expansion of micro fulfillment is having an impact on LMD vendors’ roadmaps, as more vendors are starting to include inventory visibility and management capabilities in their solutions to help optimize routing and carrier/fleet selection decisions,” Gartner wrote.
The savviest retailers and shippers will satisfy business and customer needs with a few great infrastructure innovations (or maybe even one).
This cooperation is rooted in consumer calls for greater sustainability.
“Sustainability demands are increasing from consumers and brands, impacting the roadmap of LMD vendors,” wrote Gartner. “The selection of carriers and other capabilities embedded in the delivery orchestration engine allows shippers to establish new service models based on sustainable delivery options.”
Important strategies to prepare for 2025 and beyond
There are myriad factors to weigh when considering new last-mile technology investments. Several of the key recommendations by Gartner provide a framework for retailers in search of new solutions and partners.
- “Define your business strategy, planning and timeline to ensure that vendors can grow with changing business needs, including those related to functional and geographic coverage.”
- Specify the functional areas to include, such as: delivery orchestration, fleet optimization, customer experience, post-purchase delivery capabilities, advanced analytics, and warehouse management.
- “Start with vendors that address your industry and geography. This will increase the possibility of a good functional match, adherence to local requirements and a network of logistics providers that are in your supply chain network.”
- “Determine company preference for SaaS and cloud versus an on-premises solution because many vendors have only one or the other…involve IT in these discussions.”
- “Evaluate the vendor’s ability to provide integration to other applications, such as ERP, DOM, TMS or WMS solutions.”
- “Assess the capacity of the vendor to offer consulting and implementation services that go beyond the software capabilities of the product.”
Bringg’s Analysis: The last mile is the most critical part of the supply chain now. This report shows that retailers and LSPs need effective last-mile solutions to keep up with consumer expectations. Older, home-grown solutions won’t work because they aren’t built for today’s environment. Luckily, last-mile technology is evolving just as quickly as consumer expectations and business priorities across the supply chain. And more retailers and logistics service providers are adopting last-mile technology to keep up with all the changes.
Designing a solution that addresses all the variables discussed here will be instrumental for retailers and shippers as last mile evolutions continue across 2025. The businesses that first connect their customer priorities with their business goals will have the clearest vision to outline the specific tech they need. From there, these companies can experiment with their new capabilities and refine them until they’ve got a winning strategy.
So who has the best chance to succeed this year? Businesses that invest in solutions that simultaneously address great customer experiences, operational efficiencies and cost reductions. Missing the mark in any of these areas could mean losing customers, less productivity or going over budget—all of which can impact market positioning.
With a market that changes so quickly, organizations can’t afford to be the last innovators in the race across the last mile.
Disclaimer: Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Gartner, Market Guide for Last-Mile Delivery Technology Solutions, 18 June 2024, Oscar Sanchez Duran, et.al.
GARTNER is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Bringg.