How Can Multi Carrier Shipping Platforms Streamline My Workflows?

The greater the distance a parcel or document has to travel, the more likely shipping inefficiencies are to occur. This may seem counterintuitive at first, but it is true. You might think that according to purely geographical terms, having a single carrier take a parcel from its expeditor to its destination is the most efficient way to ship. However, since we don’t live in a purely geographical world, having a solid multi carrier shipping solution in place is basically a necessity.

International shipments and cross-country domestic shipments often suffer from lack of infrastructure. A shipping provider based in the origin city may not have enough of a presence in the destination city to make a cost-efficient delivery there in a short period of time.

But customers still demand their parcels arrive as quickly as possible. As technology advances and consumers become accustomed to enjoying immediate resolutions for their problems, impatience will only grow.

Multi-carrier shipping solutions offer the ability to solve these infrastructural issues. By optimizing carrier routes to use the fastest, lowest-cost option automatically, businesses can effectively extend their shipping networks worldwide, at little to no extra cost.

What Are Multi Carrier Shipping Solutions?

Multi-carrier shipping solutions are software platforms that enable businesses to manage shipments using multiple shipping carriers from a single interface. These solutions offer access to different carriers’ rates, services, and shipping options, allowing businesses to compare and choose the best carrier for each shipment. They streamline the shipping process, optimize costs, improve delivery times, and provide comprehensive tracking and reporting features.

Multi-carrier shipping solutions enhance logistics efficiency and flexibility, ensuring businesses can meet customer delivery expectations effectively.

Multi Carrier Shipping Examples

One of the most famous examples of a global multi-carrier shipping platform is eBay and Pitney Bowes’ Global Shipping Program. Starting in 2012, eBay and Pitney Bowes began working on a joint solution that would allow eBay sellers to sell their goods internationally while enjoying competitive shipping rates.

Until then, the viability of being a worldwide seller was steeply limited by international shipping costs. Unsubsidized single-carrier international shipping rates can easily double the prices of many everyday consumer goods.

For an American eBay store owner, this meant that international markets like Germany and Japan were effectively infeasible for all but the most expensive or in-demand items. On its own, the USPS could not ensure the lowest possible price and best possible delivery time for an international shipment of this kind because it doesn’t have enough international infrastructure.

But the Global Shipping Program solves this problem by putting the USPS on equal footing with its foreign analogues and private shipping carriers alike. Pitney Bowes’ system compares rates automatically and then allocates packages to the most efficient route.

For a package sent from the United States to Germany, this could mean using the USPS shipping platform for local pickup, transferring to the FedEx shipping platform for overseas travel, and then using the UPS shipping platform to deliver the parcel to its destination. When all three systems cooperate, they achieve better speed and efficiency than when siloed against one another.

This is just one example of how cooperative economics works in an open-ended system. While many economists define capitalist enterprise in terms of competition, cooperation is actually a greater value generator in today’s hyper-connected technological landscape.

How Do The Shipping Platforms Work?

Unsurprisingly, multi-carrier shipping platforms are complex. As ecommerce mailing solutions, they offer enormous value to consumers and manufacturers alike, but they require intelligent automation to run.

Pitney Bowes mailing solutions use intelligent automation to find the most efficient routes for its customers. These automated processes focus on three key items of information.

• Location. In order to develop sustainable ecommerce mailing services, multi-carrier shipping platforms need to map out warehouse, store, and dropship locations and then compare them to high-volume destinations. Analytics of previous shipping data is an important tool for determining optimal location.
• Carrier Type. Global carriers like FedEx and UPS tend to charge more for long-haul deliveries than regional carriers do. Connecting regional carriers to global ones and identifying opportunities for cross-carrier efficiency makes the multi-carrier shipping platform work.
• Flexibility. Multi-carrier shipping is all about flexibility. Without flexible workflows and software-driven processes, there are bound to be difficulties in “translating” orders from one carrier to another. Optimizing flexibility allows carriers to handle any parcel under all but the most unorthodox conditions.

Carriers are beginning to see the value of this multifaceted, cooperative approach. This is why major global carriers like FedEx are acquiring regional carriers, often paying enormous sums for the privilege.

Why a Sending Strategy Is More Important Than Ever

A sound multi-carrier sending strategy has become critical for small- and mid-sized businesses to stay competitive. Large Internet retailers – chief among them, Amazon – have set the standard that just about anything a customer wants can be theirs the following day.

The “Amazon Effect” has changed expectations for companies across every industry, but the outcome is always the same – customers want less friction between themselves and their products. Of course, most small- and mid-sized businesses lack the leverage needed to negotiate more favorable shipping costs. They are often stuck feeling like they have no other option but to watch their overhead continue to steadily rise.

The Problem with a Single-Carrier Strategy

The only way to successfully navigate these changing prices is to utilize a multi-carrier strategy, so your company has some options for delivery. Shipping systems that rely on just a single carrier still make up about 85% of all parcel-shipping strategies.

Even though these strategies may be well-thought out and executed, they all suffer from the same fatal flaw: they make it a real challenge to switch from one carrier to another. This is because they need to create separate systems for each carrier, a time-consuming process that often ends in awkward results.

The contracted volumes involved can also make it cost-prohibitive to switch between carriers. Unfortunately, far too many companies see these challenges and simply revert to their single-carrier strategy, even though it means they’re spending unnecessary sums to do so. That’s usually the case even if their carrier offers volume discounts.

Choosing a Multi-Carrier Sending Solution

Electing to go with a multi-carrier sending solution gives your company the freedom to choose how best to deliver items to its customers. This guarantees your business greater savings, something that every company enjoys, but a benefit that becomes progressively more important as you scale up your operation.

Furthermore, you have the freedom to pick from all available delivery times across different carriers. You’re no longer forced to contort your shipping schedules around a single carrier’s availability. This also means your company can modify shipping times based on the needs of different customers.

Making Use of the USPS in Your Sending Strategy

When considering your company’s multi-carrier shipping strategy, don’t forget to include the United States Postal Service.

In addition to the fact that the USPS got very aggressive on the package rates for packages between 1- 40#, the USPS has a distinct advantage over the other major carriers in terms of their national reach and delivery times.  USPS does coast-to-coast in 2-3 days. Other carriers are 5-7 days.  Getting your product to clients faster and less expensively means you get paid faster and provide a higher level of client satisfaction. USPS also has no residential charges, no fuel surcharges, no address correction fees and other accessorial charges that other carriers implement, and delivers on Saturdays and, in some cases, Sundays.

Choosing the Right Carriers for Your Strategy

Obviously, there are other carriers to choose from besides the USPS. For example, you might need global shipping. However, for regional shipments, you wouldn’t want to use one of these carriers, as they typically charge significantly more.

If your company is stretched out across multiple locations and ships from each of them, you’ll need to find out which carriers are available in which areas. Once you have this figured out for each location, it’s fairly simple.

You just need to look at these carriers’ weight breaks and other measures, so you know which to use for different types of packages. Then, going forward, you’ll want to keep an eye on these metrics to ensure you don’t end up overpaying because of fluctuations to their pricing.

Solutions for Facilitating Multi-Carrier Shipping

This whole process becomes much easier if you use a multi-carrier shipping platform. It will remove all the guesswork from your strategy. In fact, it’s fair to say that one of these devices will do the majority of the work on your behalf.

Here are the two best options available:

SendPro SaaS based App

The SendPro App is a SaaS-based device that makes it easy to always choose the right mailing and shipping options for anything your company wants to send. Multiple users can access and process/rate shop carriers quickly for their needs, and the system uses you current carrier account number and discounts to compare for best options.  Systems then generate the needed labels and set up carrier pickups.  For controlling, system will also provide reports on activity by users, department, or whatever criteria you need.

SendPro C & P-Series

With the SendPro C & P-Series options, everything you need for shipping, mailing, and receiving is available in one simple system. This provides all the capabilities of the Send Pro App but also integrates with a postage meter so you have a central point of processing for all outbound sending.  Options on the P Series can also allow you to easily log every incoming packages’ information, giving you a history of each one that has ever arrived and a chain of custody for critical and high value documents and packages.

Multi Carrier Shipping Experts

This logistics framework is more than an eCommerce mailing solution. Any company that regularly sends out high-volume parcels can benefit from Pitney Bowes mailing services the way eBay has. Multi-carrier shipping frameworks can help with domestic deliveries and international deliveries alike.

Any company looking for opportunities to grow its customer base through increased geographical presence and Internet-powered marketing can potentially use multi-carrier solutions to deliver. The key is working with a reliable partner that can ensure your shipping processes become efficient, automated tasks designed for optimal efficiency.

Are you ready to reduce shipping costs and delivery times using an automated multi-carrier shipping platform? Contact Kelley Create to get a free assessment.