What does the future hold for shipping and logistics? originally appeared on Quora, the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus.

We’ve seen shipping costs for business skyrocket. Rising e-commerce sales, which grew 15.5% year over year to $448 billion in 2017, drove up parcel delivery costs for businesses to $99 billion, a rise of 7% from 2016 (WSJ).

The demand for same-day and next day delivery is also increasing. Even established shipping providers like DHL have been testing services that engage drivers through crowd-sourced applications for deliveries within a few hours.

With the increased demands for shipping and the growth of e-commerce, we’re seeing dedicated efforts around warehousing automation, drones and robots as well as autonomous trucks that help alleviate the pressure on increased parcel delivery. The tech industry has focused on building commerce enablement tools that help entrepreneurs automate the infrastructure part of building a business, especially shipping and logistics.

In the future, it’s not going to be necessary for every single entrepreneur to figure out how to build a website or how to build a payment gateway or master shipping themselves. Tech companies are providing the right building blocks for that. Many of them also grow with you by providing scale as a service. This is going to make global commerce, for instance, more frictionless.

With increasingly automated infrastructure, humans in turn can focus on what’s uniquely human: being creative and building emotional connections. Humans are the only species that make art for no reason. We’re excited for a world where more people can become entrepreneurs with little upfront investments, where entrepreneurs can reach customers all around the world, where entrepreneurs can focus on what they are best at, which is making amazing products. I’ve not met a merchant who is excited to solve their shipping challenge. That’s what companies like Shippo are good for.

This question originally appeared on Quora. More questions on Quora:

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