How the Right Shipping Software Impacts Your Bottom Line

Choosing the right shipping software is critical because it impacts your company’s bottom line. Here are eight steps to take to ensure you choose the right solution for your company’s individual needs.

1. Guarantee that you’re paying the lowest freight costs possible on all your shipments. Combined with the costs and/or business rules that have been established in your business, shipping software allows you to automate which carrier and service level is chosen. So, if a customer doesn’t mind how long it takes to receive their order, certain shipping solutions enable your company to choose a carrier that will deliver in five to seven business days. This dramatically cuts down on shipping costs.
2. Producing carrier-certified shipping labels, manifests and other required documents is simple. Multicarrier shipping software enables companies to easily meet requirements for compliant labeling, without having to change printers, label stock, or systems. This reduces carrier charge-backs for non-compliant issues, and reduces the overall amount spent on freight.




3. Deliver more orders quickly to ultimately enable you to grow your business by shipping from any inventory source. Combining powerful shipping software with improved physical flow decreases the amount of time and effort it takes to ship a package without incurring additional costs. Eliminating steps will improve the speed of package processing and avoid lost or incorrectly shipped packages.
4. Mid to high volume shippers are able to increase operational efficiencies and add growth potential. The flexibility of scalable solutions allows your businessto grow, whether you are adding locations, stores,e-commerce sites or international shipping destinations.
5. Integrating all your systems and technologies leverages a cost-effective, interconnected supply chain. Shipping software is often designed with a modular architecture, allowing you to install, pay for, and maintain only those modules that your business actually needs, saving both time and money.
6. Have increased visibility for live package status, delivery updates and shipment history for internal and customer use. Shipping software allows complete order visibility within the enterprise, and instant tracking once packages leave your facility. This visibility empowers customers to track their own packages, which in turn, saves your shipping and customer service departments’ time.
7. Allows you to meet increasing customer expectations for shipment delivery. Shipping is the end process for all of the efforts that have been made at each stage of the commercial chain, from acquiring the customer to making the sale. The happier a customer is when they receive your parcel, the more likely they are to order again.
8. Tracking returns and the reverse logistics process will be streamlined as well. Having visibility of every point of a parcel’s journey, including returns, is vital for operational efficiency.

10 Ways to Save While Shipping

1. Reduce or eliminate Air Waybills: Use an automated shipping system. Audit invoices for fraud and address errors.

2. Understand carriers’ annual parcel rate increases: Know the weights of your actual shipments when discussing discounts with your carriers.

3. Determine if signature delivery is truly necessary: Utilize email notifications with tracking numbers or the USPS® Electronic Return Receipt (eRR).

4. Examine the true delivery need of your recipients: Utilize tools that show the delivery times and cost of services.

5. Create a shipping label only when needed: Only create a shipping label for a shipment when it will actually be shipped. Utilize reports for keeping track of shipments.

6. Assign department cost centers for every shipment: Institute business rules and technology—mandate users input department cost centers for all shipments.

7. The Thursday/ Friday factor: Avoid carriers that charge extra costs for using a Saturday service. No extra cost with USPS®; Saturday is a regular business day.

8. Determine the organizational impact of inbound shipments: Determine the process flow of shipments arriving throughout the day. Set policies for personal shipments.

9. Understand every surcharge: Understand which charges are avoidable. Audit your invoices regularly. Assign cost centers and pinpoint the users, recipients and services that are causing the greatest increase in costs.

10. Educate people in your organization: Communicate preferred carriers and services. Understand your carrier contracts.