E-commerce businesses have drastically flourished as technology and customer experiences become more personalized. However, most companies face the dilemma of cutting down shipping costs to remain profitable or delivering high-quality shipping services to customers. This is where parcel shipping solutions come to your aid to effectively optimize your supply chain needs.
Shipping costs are a considerable expense for every business, but you may face issues when trying to save money because it will ultimately hamper your customer experience. Shipping costs can majorly impact your bottom line, especially in logistics and e-commerce. Thankfully, there are effective strategies that can allow you to reduce shipping costs without compromising on your service quality.
This article post will unfold some proven and practical ways to reduce shipping expenses and increase savings.
1. Access Complete Shipping Data Visibility
Most of the time, supply chain businesses do not utilize analytics because of data inaccessibility and inadequate data integration. They avoid making decisions based on the data due to poor confidence in data quality. The visibility of data starts with its quality. Data quality and it’s relevancy can be defined as data that fits its intended purpose and is validated and utilized accurately and timeously.
Without quality data, every KPIs, reporting, and analytics are unreliable. That is why you need efficient shipping software to accurately deliver comprehensive shipping data visibility to save extra shipping costs. With effective parcel shipping analytics, you can easily uncover opportunities, compare carrier performance, negotiate confidently, and more.
In 2023, you need an end-to-end analytics tool with optimum visibility at your fingertip. Actionable insights enable you to make effective decisions to improve operations, service, and overall performance. With a complete view of parcel shipping data, you can glean opportunities for cost savings and drive real ROI.
2. Optimize Product Packaging
As package dimensions and weight affect the shipping costs charged by carriers, it is crucial to make your parcel as small as possible. Do not forget that carriers take the dimensions of the packages very seriously while evaluating the shipping costs. Recently, carriers noticed losing money on large and light items. So, trimming down the package that fits and protects your product accurately is really important.
We cannot reduce the weight of our products, but we can slim down the shipping packages and their infills. To avoid paying more for the space the package takes up, there are three main considerations to keep in mind:
- Use customized boxes for the products
- Better fitting packages mean fewer infill materials
- If it is possible, pack multiple products in one pack
For small businesses, it is vital to save as much as possible so that the best available option can be utilized. It is the best offer to deliver sufficient support for various products while enhancing cost savings.
3. Improve Post-Purchase Customer Experience
Customers expect clear communication and transparency during the entire buying process. The customer wants complete visibility from order to delivery and everything in between. Estimated delivery dates and shipping expectations are essential during the customer purchase process.
Parcel shippers must set clear expectations of shipment delivery dates and communicate all shipping exceptions, such as delays or any other discrepancy. Customers typically forgive businesses that maintain complete transparency. If delivery dates are not met properly, and there is a lack of communication, brand value can hamper, and customer loyalty will deteriorate. A parcel shipping solution can be advantageous to deal with this scenario.
4. Automate the Decision-Making Process
It is a given that 2023 will be a fast-paced business landscape. A powerful parcel shipping system to measure and monitor your shipping operations will distinguish success and failure. With the help of automated processing, thriving businesses can reduce non-value-added manual work and leverage predictive analytics.
Automation uses machine learning, artificial intelligence, and other upgraded technologies to make decision-making a well-planned and orchestrated process. Automated parcel shipping analytics follow predefined business rules to enhance productivity and efficiency.
Decision-making backed by automated parcel shipping systems is best applied to predictable, manual, and repetitive tasks to reduce human efforts and errors. This solution analyses your historical data and provides accurate reporting so that you can make optimum decisions and save costs on your shipping operations.
5. Diversify the Multi-Carrier Option
Unsurprisingly, single-carrier parcel shipping is no longer advantageous for shippers. A diversified carrier mix approach is necessary for businesses to have an agile shipping strategy.
There are a few benefits of going for the multi-carrier option in 2023:
- Reduced cost
- Increased sales
- Extra agility and flexibility
- Mitigate risks
- Effective delivery times
- Improves operational visibility
6. Implement the Right Shipping Solution
With so many new options available in the market, it takes time to evaluate which solution fits your shipping operations.
In this situation, you always face the dilemma of where to start.
Start with a trusted technology partner that understands the significance of solving root issues and hidden insights.
Cloud-based automated solutions are packed with advanced integration capabilities to help shippers with effective shipping. Traditional systems are often outdated, siloed, and slow. Applying a cloud-based multi-carrier shipping software solutions suite enables businesses to analyze, automate, model, and audit their shipping operations efficiently.
Apart from modern technology, you deserve a team to stay focused and succeed. In 2023 get the data, advanced technology, and dedicated professionals to support your supply chain needs.
Do Not Get Surprised, Unprepared, and Scrambled – Apply an Agile Parcel Shipping Software
TransImpact’s Industry-Leading Parcel Shipping Solutions enable you to access complete visibility into your parcel shipping operations. Our brilliant solutions allow our clients to track their parcels and negotiate confidently with their carriers. Do not let carriers take advantage of you. Enable a parcel shipping system to better understand the hidden insights and make better business decisions. To understand more about our solutions, talk to our experts or book a demo.
