Parcel shipping is an expensive business. Customers are rarely willing to pay high delivery charges, so maximizing logistics return on investment is critical. You need to get the most customer satisfaction at the lowest shipping costs.
The best way to ensure you optimize service levels and reduce costs is with multi carrier shipping software. Here we look at the reasons why high volume and global shippers need multi carrier shipping software.
Why Global Enterprises Need Multi Carrier Shipping Software
Multi carrier parcel shipping software improves visibility and control across the globe. The most comprehensive solutions do so regardless of the point of origin or delivery.
This is vitally important when you ship to customers around the world. There are complex regulations that govern the movement of goods and vary by country. These include sanctions, licenses and other compliance checks.
Furthermore, international shipments require lots of documentation. Missing or incomplete paperwork will delay shipments.
Multi carrier shipping software completes all necessary compliance checks and automatically creates labels, documentation and tracking numbers.
The solution completes all documentation in the right format, and right language to ensure your parcels sail through customs.
Six Ways Multi Carrier Shipping Lowers Parcel Delivery Costs
Along with those benefits, there are six additional benefits that multi carrier shipping software provides to the shipper.
1. ENJOY THE BEST RATES FROM ALL CARRIERS
The software automatically analyzes each shipment to determine the best carrier and rate that meets service level requirements. There’s no need to engage in complex comparisons via rate shopping or to settle for sub optimum service.
2. NEGOTIATE FROM STRENGTH AND INSIGHT
When it comes time to negotiate new contracts, shippers have all the information they need. The software provides reports showing the spend with each carrier as well as the carrier’s performance.
3. CONSOLIDATE SHIPMENTS
Multi carrier shipping software can help shippers save money by consolidating shipments on the fly as parcels are ready to go. Consolidated parcels in a single shipment are broken down on arrival at a distribution center for final delivery. This can result in significant savings, particularly for international destinations. Better still, a consolidated shipment only requires a single customs declaration.
4. FLEXIBLE AND LESS COSTLY RETURNS
One of the biggest costs for high volume shippers is reverse logistics and managing returns. The best carrier for outbound shipments may not be the best for returns.
This is why many shippers use different carriers for inbound and outbound shipments, especially when the shipper has multiple locations to manage. Multi carrier shipping software simplifies this process by ensuring that goods are returned at the lowest possible cost.
5. CARRIER COMPLIANCE
Every carrier has its own rules and requirements. Some of the largest carriers have the most complex rules. They are generally the most restrictive in ensuring that shippers comply with all aspects of the rules.
Multi carrier shipping software manages this task for you. Your team follows a single, standardized process, and behind the scenes, the software ensures you’re in compliance.
6. INCREASE CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
Customers may require that their packages are shipped with a specific carrier. Unless you have a multi carrier shipping solution in place, you may not be able to easily facilitate these requests.
Multi carrier shipping software can enable a company to take advantage of the benefits of a multi carrier strategy without worrying about the complexities of dealing with multiple carriers. The software handles all the calculations and paperwork, helping to ensure better customer satisfaction.
Why You Need To Audit Parcel Shipping Spend
To really drive logistics ROI, shippers — especially high volume shippers — need to audit their parcel freight spend.
Annual as well as periodic rate increases, accessorial charges, fuel surcharges, dimensional pricing — the number of variables that go into calculating freight charges is ever increasing. This makes it difficult to understand if every invoice from every carrier is correct.
Manual audits are time consuming and error prone, and third party audits are expensive. But the best multi carrier shipping software includes audit capabilities.
Multi carrier shipping software with freight auditing addresses all of these issues. This is automated, meaning that you don’t need to share your data with outside auditors or burden your staff with complex analytics.
For example, accessorial charges are a frequent cause of invoice errors. Your freight auditing solution will verify these charges to ensure they are warranted. The software can even recognize incorrect and incomplete addresses up front to eliminate one common cause of unnecessary charges.
Freight auditing validates invoices against shipments regardless of the carrier, mode, geographical region, language, or currency of the transactions. This complete visibility and in depth reporting gives you the control you need over your freight costs without the need to perform these painstaking audits.
Want to see how QAD Multi Carrier Shipping could help your enterprise? Please contact us for more information.
