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What happens when you need to ship a few dozen packages to several parts of the country? It’s initially chaotic, right? However, you can simplify your business logistics with a multi-carrier shipping software that’s built to help you win big with your customers.
When your business is growing, your supply chain process needs to scale up with it to handle larger volumes of shipments. Shipping can have a large effect on your bottom line, so it’s important to optimize your supply chain logistics.
With more consumers doing their shopping online, shipping on time and within budget is getting increasingly competitive, especially with industry giants like Amazon. Improve your logistics with a multi-carrier shipping software to compete for your customer’s time, money, and attention. You can most certainly do it with some help.
What is Multi-Carrier Shipping?
Multi-carrier shipping software is a platform that automates and streamlines your supply chain process. For example, you can start using the software to compare quotes from various carriers and initiate the shipping process, all in one platform. Solutions like ShipERP provide users with the ability to manage all shipments with features like track and trace.
Benefits of Multi-Carrier Shipping Software That You Can Win Big With
Your logistics efficiency sinks when you have multiple shipments to make but are only using a single carrier. This potential problem incentivizes many shippers to change it up a bit – diversify your shipping carrier collection to learn which service would help you efficiently and effectively deliver shipments around the world.
Perform Data Consolidation, Saving You Time and Money
A multi-carrier shipping software acts as a database for all shipments, spend history, and carrier quotes. With all data and shipments on one platform, your business can manage the shipping process much faster and easier because you don’t have to jump from one platform to another to compare quotes, initiate shipments, and track them to make sure that they get to the rightful recipient. The consolidation of most, if not all, information frees up your time to focus on other business priorities.
It’s nice to take control of costs, isn’t it? Well, controlling shipping costs is crucial for any business. Here are some factors you can manage: bad weather and incorrect address can add to the total shipping costs aside from the standard carrier rates. Therefore, having the ability to compare carrier quotes allows your business to use the fairest pricing for what you need. Of course, remember the cheapest is not always best. It’s a balance act between scoring low costs and essential and impactful features, such as real-time tracking and rate quoting.
Aside from better costs, the efficiency of a consolidated platform saves your business labor time. Without an integrated platform, you’d have to persistently call and email multiple carriers to find the best quote. In contrast, it only takes a few clicks within one platform to discover all the information you need, while having it sync up with information from other departments such as customer service, finance, accounting, etc.
Reduce Data Entry Error for Compliance & Regulation
Using a shipping and logistics software eliminates the concern of entry errors by verifying each aspect of the shipment data. Your logistics process can move faster with the peace of mind that the data is error-proof.
Data entry errors can result in poor customer delivery experiences like lost packages that lead to lower customer retention rate. Not only that, your business would most likely have to pay more to satisfy customer complaints.
If your business is also conducting freight bill auditing, you want all the data to be completely accurate. With accurate data, your company can determine whether you’re incurring a loss.
Each carrier and business must follow different sets of rules and regulations, depending on what that shipment contains and where its destination is. With that said, a multi-carrier shipping software automates all the needed paperwork and documents for the freights to carry out deliveries. Automation reduces the room for error so that your company can seamlessly proceed with its business functions.
Diversify Your Shipments
Streamline your shipping and delivery process by assigning your shipments to various carriers. Not all carrier networks and their capacities are created equally. For example, one carrier may have a better capacity in the West, while another carrier has improved their network in the Northeast. Having carrier options is much more efficient when you have multiple shipments to make.
Being limited to one carrier can put your logistics in tight spots. For example, deciding between shipping orders faster but at higher costs or shipping with a discount for bulk orders but risk missing a delivery date.
On the customer’s end, customers want their products shipped fast, cheap, and by a method that suits them. 61 percent of customers say that they are willing to pay more for same-day delivery which shows us that fast shipping is important even at higher prices. Bringing on a carrier that provides this is quickly becoming a necessity as same-day delivery is expected to be the norm by 2023.
Nowadays, it’s standard to have a variety of shipping methods for the customers to choose from. Flexibility is essential for businesses to satisfy customers with delivery experiences and exceed your company’s bottom line.
Building Your Multi-Carrier Shipping Strategy
We are confident that you can build your shipping strategy on a multi-carrier shipping foundation. Here’s how to do it.
- A successful multi-carrier strategy takes advantage of the strengths and skills of each different carrier. It's hard to tell what would be cost effective when you’re juggling each carrier’s strengths and rates, but that’s solved with an automated multi-carrier software.
- Competing for customer loyalty is crucial in this experience-oriented environment, where customer demands are continually changing. Businesses are pressured by shipping expectations set by Amazon to offer their customers cheap and fast shipping. Once your business starts offering shipping options for customers, it’s likely that customer retention will increase.
- As previously mentioned, customer demands change over time. It’s important that your multi-carrier shipping software and its subsequent strategy is scalable. A scalable solution would be worth investing in, instead of switching software every time your business grows which saves time and money.
- Identify shipping partners is key to a successful multi-carrier shipping strategy. A shipping partner that can provide service guarantees and favorable pricing and payment terms will lead to deeper savings for your company.
- Choose a multi-carrier shipping solution with an experienced technical support team. Your software’s technical team should be able to resolve your issues if you’re experiencing difficulties with the software. Maintaining open and constant communication with your software provider will ensure smooth operations and increase logistics efficiency.
Without a multi-carrier strategy, their shipping game is locked by a single carrier that can ship higher volumes but isn’t what the customers want or is cost-effective. Not all carriers have the flexibility to keep up with customer expectations, but you can overcome that restriction by transforming your shipping with multi-carrier shipping software and a robust supply chain strategy.
We provide ShipERP, the multi-carrier shipping and compliance solution that integrates with SAP. ShipERP provides businesses with the ability to rapidly ship products during the pick/pack/ship process and selectively adjust shipping services on the fly.
