Blog

Annual Awards Program Recognizes Top Innovators in Global Supply Chain Technology and Logistics

Enveyo, a leading Transportation Management System (TMS) and shipping optimization software provider, today announced it has been selected as the winner of the “3PL Solution of the Year” award in the inaugural SupplyTech Breakthrough Awards. The awards program conducted by SupplyTech Breakthrough, a leading independent market intelligence organization, evaluates and recognizes standout technology companies, products, and services in the supply chain and logistics industry around the globe.

SupplyTech Breakthrough selected Enveyo as the winner of “3PL Solution of the Year” because it is the only shipping software provider that automates parcel analytics and billing management for third-party logistics (3PL) providers. Through integration with 3PLs’ carrier networks and internal business systems, Enveyo’s parcel analytics solution, Insights, powers a customer-facing, 3PL-branded portal reporting on real-time, comprehensive data specific to each customer, including:

• Carrier time in transit
• Cost per piece by carrier
• Delivery exceptions
• Service & accessorial charges
• Time from ordered to delivered
• Package status
• and more

Additionally, Enveyo Insights streamlines complex 3PL billing processes and protects visibility into rates. Dynamic business logic empowers 3PLs to retire legacy customer billing processes and shift to a dynamic process that ensures when published carrier rates shift, customers always receive market-leading discounted rates, while 3PLs gain accuracy and security in invoicing. Simplifying billing management results in a reduction in business risk and labor costs, an increase in customer satisfaction, and a new value add for 3PLs.

“What an honor it is to receive the ‘3PL Solution of the Year’ award in the inaugural SupplyTech Breakthrough program. These past two years have posed a number of challenges for 3PLs. Solving parcel analytics and billing challenges helps these organizations turn shipping into a competitive advantage,” said Coby Nilsson, Enveyo’s co-founder and CEO. “E-commerce brands want their 3PL partners to be technology providers. Enveyo Insights makes that a reality with improved accuracy, understanding, and most importantly, trust.”

The mission of the annual SupplyTech Breakthrough Awards program is to conduct the industry’s most comprehensive analysis and evaluation of the top technology companies, solutions, and products in the supply chain and logistics industry today. This year’s program attracted more than 1,200 nominations from over 15 different countries around the globe.

“For 3PLs, to say shipment analytics and billing management is ‘complex’ is an understatement, as many 3PLs face challenges around delivering shipment program visibility to their e-commerce clients and invoicing them in an accurate and timely manner,” said Bryan Vaughn, Managing Director of SupplyTech Breakthrough Awards. “Enveyo Insights addresses these challenges for 3PLs and enables them to be technology providers. This represents true breakthrough technology in the industry, and we are thrilled to congratulate the Enveyo team for taking home our ‘3PL Solution of the Year’ award in the 2022 SupplyTech Breakthrough Awards program.”

About Enveyo

Enveyo is revolutionizing the way technology drives logistics. As the only multi-carrier parcel TMS provider enabling end-to-end supply chain visibility, organizations are optimizing their shipping operations with Enveyo’s cloud-based suite of solutions. Powered by a robust enterprise data management platform, Enveyo provides real-time access to meaningful reporting to increase efficiencies for customers across industries including retail, medical, aerospace, fulfillment & third-party logistics companies. To learn more about how Enveyo is revolutionizing logistics, visit enveyo.com.

About SupplyTech Breakthrough

Part of the Tech Breakthrough organization, a leading global provider of market intelligence and recognition platforms for technology innovation and leadership, the SupplyTech Breakthrough Awards program is devoted to honoring innovation and market disruption in supply chain & logistics technologies, services, companies, and products around the world. The annual SupplyTech Breakthrough Awards provide public recognition for the achievements of SupplyTech companies and products in categories including Inventory Management, Supply Chain Visibility, Transportation Management, Material Handling, IoT and Robotics, and more. For more information visit SupplyTechBreakthrough.com.

View the full list of 2022 winners.

Implementing Enveyo Insights Enables Saddle Creek to Automate Parcel Analytics & Client Billing

Enveyo, a leading Transportation Management System (TMS) and shipping optimization software provider, today reports an implementation of cloud-based, parcel analytics solution, Insights, helped leading third-party logistics (3PL) provider, Saddle Creek Logistics Services, to streamline and automate parcel analytics and client billing management.

Shipping nearly 50 million parcels annually from 54 distribution centers nationwide increased the complexity of parcel program analytics and billing management processes for Saddle Creek. Like many leading 3PLs, Saddle Creek faced challenges in delivering clear shipment program visibility to its growing segment of e-commerce clients and invoicing them efficiently.

Saddle Creek selected Enveyo’s parcel analytics solution, Insights, to eliminate manual and time-consuming shipment reporting and billing processes. Through integration with Saddle Creek’s parcel carrier network and internal Warehouse Management System (WMS), Enveyo Insights powers a Saddle Creek-branded, client-facing portal reporting on parcel shipping data specific to the needs of each client.

The Enveyo Insights software implementation enables Saddle Creek to:

• Provide clients with forward-facing visibility and a comprehensive view of their shipping data
• Eliminate complex, manual analytics and billing procedures and build a sustainable, software-driven process that supports business growth
• Reduce business risk through efficient and accurate client invoicing
• Speed up client billing processes by 77%

Implementing Enveyo Insights transformed how Saddle Creek manages its parcel analytics and client billing processes, resulting in a new value add for clients and prospects.

“We implemented Enveyo Insights as our parcel analytics tool to offer shippers much-needed transparency into their parcel data and costs,” said Megan Rudolph, Senior Director of Strategic Parcel Operations at Saddle Creek. “With this new functionality, our clients also have visibility into carrier performance, so they can ensure their parcel solution optimizes costs while still meeting the end customer’s delivery expectations.”

Coby Nilsson, Enveyo’s Co-Founder and CEO said, “We’re honored Saddle Creek chose Enveyo to streamline, automate, and enhance shipping program visibility throughout its customer base. The parcel market continues to grow in its complexity, and we’re excited to support Saddle Creek on their mission to continuously innovate and remain a 3PL industry leader.”

To learn more about Saddle Creek’s experience with Enveyo Insights, read the full case study. To learn more about Enveyo’s cloud-based suite of shipping optimization software, visit enveyo.com.

About Enveyo
Enveyo is revolutionizing the way technology drives logistics. As the only multi-carrier parcel TMS provider enabling end-to-end supply chain visibility, organizations are optimizing their shipping operations with Enveyo’s cloud-based suite of solutions. Powered by a robust enterprise data management platform, Enveyo provides real-time access to meaningful reporting to increase efficiencies for customers across industries including retail, medical, aerospace, fulfillment & third-party logistics companies. To learn more about how Enveyo is revolutionizing logistics, visit enveyo.com.

About Saddle Creek Logistics Services
Saddle Creek is an omnichannel supply chain solutions company providing a variety of integrated logistics services, including order fulfillment, warehousing and transportation. Our custom solutions leverage advanced operational methods and sophisticated technologies to help retailers, manufacturers and ecommerce companies get products where they need to be quickly, cost-effectively and seamlessly. For more information, visit www.sclogistics.com.

For Third Party Logistics (3PL) providers, to say parcel analytics and billing management is “complex” is an understatement. In order to provide specialized programs to support e-commerce customer needs and end consumer demands, 3PLs partner with a variety of national, regional, and final mile carriers. A big carrier network comes with big data, and that leads to big data management challenges.

Providing clients with visibility into both 3PL and carrier performance adds additional complexity. 3PLs often extend their contracted carrier rates to clients to offer market-leading discounts by leveraging their high collective shipping volume. However, it’s important for 3PLs to protect visibility into their carrier rates, as charges passed through to clients vary based on agreements. Brands that partner with 3PL providers for e-commerce fulfillment want clear visibility into how the 3PL and their network of carriers are performing for them, including comprehensive cost analysis.

Providing customer-facing metrics in real-time is complex for any size 3PL. For large 3PLs that leverage a dynamic, multi-carrier parcel shipping strategy… the complexity is off the charts.

In this blog, we’ll cover how 3PLs can streamline complex parcel analytics and customer billing challenges through systems integration and automation.

How to Overcome 3PL Billing Management Challenges

Integrate Your Shipping Tech Stack

The first step towards gaining efficiency in 3PL parcel analytics and billing processes is full systems integration across your parcel shipping tech stack. Any system that you rely on for parcel shipping needs to be integrated and feeding data to your parcel analytics and business intelligence (BI) platform to leverage business-critical data, including:

• Transportation Management System (TMS)
• Order Management System (OMS)
• Warehouse Management System (WMS)
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system
• Parcel carrier systems, i.e., UPS, FedEx, USPS

Leveraging a robust parcel analytics platform that maps data fields and automatically imports comprehensive shipping data on a recurring cadence, creates a single source of truth and enables data-driven decision making.

The next step in parcel shipping tech stack integration is aggregating and normalizing your data. Data housed in TMS, WMS, OMS, and carrier systems often have field or column names that don’t align with one another. For example, customer name in one file may be called account name in another file. Un-standardized fields across data will lead to massive problems in understanding and analyzing that data unless you leverage a system that can normalize it upon import.

It’s important to leverage a parcel analytics and BI platform that has the flexibility to take in data of many different formats as well as alter that data during the import process without human intervention. For example, your customer’s account number coming from your OMS system may be 123765, but when that data is displayed on a dashboard in your parcel analytics tool, you want it to say the customer’s name for easy identification and simplified reporting.

Many traditional parcel analytics tools require a strict data import format, putting the burden on a human resource to manually update that data. This is a wasteful and time-consuming task for the smallest of organizations, but for large shippers and 3PLs, human touchpoints quickly lead to bottlenecks and challenges across the entire shipping operation. Make sure you’re leveraging a parcel analytics platform that can consume data from many different sources and in many different formats to gain efficiency and reduce human touchpoints.

Automate 3PL Customer Invoicing

Human touchpoints can be further reduced by automating your 3PL billing management processes. Once your shipping systems are integrated, your data is aggregated and normalized into your parcel analytics and BI platform, it’s time to create rule sets to enable automated 3PL customer invoicing.

When it comes to billing management and invoicing processes, not all 3PLs are created equally. Different carriers, rate structures, customer agreements and discounts will vary across each organization due to their specific business needs, amplifying the complexity of the customer invoicing process.

3PLs can streamline customer billing processes by leveraging a parcel analytics platform that can:

• Receive parcel bills from each carrier in their network
• Receive end customer order information and accurately map data to each 3PL client
• Calculate accurate rates based on their discount structure and client agreements
• Apply shipping charges and accessorial fees to the appropriate client
• Report on parcel shipment data in a branded, customer-facing portal

This is why it’s important to leverage a parcel analytics platform that is robust enough to handle an infinite number of rulesets and parse millions of records in a short period of time.

Through systems integration, 3PLs can further leverage their parcel analytics tool to automatically push data back into their desired business system to create the output of a client invoice and efficiently manage payments.

Parcel Analytics & 3PL Billing Management: A New Value Add

 

E-commerce brands want their 3PL partners to be technology providers, but 3PLs have long struggled to provide their clients with accurate and timely parcel shipping data due to the complex nature of this dynamic environment. Visibility into data is crucial, so 3PLs need to leverage a platform that enables customer-facing dashboards, reporting on real-time, comprehensive parcel shipping data.

3PLs have long held parcel shipping data close to the vest to avoid billing discrepancies caused by manual error. The increase in demand for visibility spreads across the entire e-commerce landscape from the manufacturer to the consumer, and 3PL clients are no different. Providing clients with full visibility into parcel program performance is a key strategy to gain trust and increase customer loyalty.

Offer your clients and prospects a new value add through a 3PL-branded, customer-facing portal reporting on real-time shipping data, including:

• Carrier performance – including time in transit
• Delivery exceptions
• Service & accessorial charges
• Time from ordered to delivered
• Package status
• and more

 

The more freedom you can provide your clients to access their parcel shipping data when they need it, the more trust you gain. Clients can see the full detail behind each of their charges, while the 3PL can see parcel program performance across the entire operation, leading to increased efficiency and long-term competitive advantage.

 

Two 3PL Billing Management Success Stories

 

Stord

Stord, the pioneer of Cloud Supply Chain, sought a shipping optimization software provider to help solve complex parcel analytics and billing management challenges. Like many 3PLs, Stord faced challenges around delivering clear shipment program visibility to its growing segment of e-commerce shippers and effectively invoicing those customers in an accurate and timely manner. Stord wanted a supply chain technology partner who could enhance their parcel analytics capabilities, extend real-time reporting to customers, and streamline & speed-up their parcel billing management processes.

Through integration with Stord’s vast network of carriers and internal business systems, Enveyo’s parcel analytics platform, Insights, powers a customer-facing, Stord-branded portal reporting on real-time, comprehensive parcel shipping data specific to each customer’s shipments.

Business logic leveraged within Insights enables Stord to introduce a dynamic customer billing process that ensures when published carrier rates shift, Stord customers remain confident in always receiving 3PL market-leading discounted rates off the carrier’s published list price. This new process helps Stord gain accuracy and security in its invoicing process, eliminating risk of lost margin due to a billing discrepancy.

The Enveyo Insights implementation empowers Stord to:

• Publish white-labeled, customer-facing dashboards with both pre-configured and customizable reports of comprehensive shipping data to meet each customer’s business needs.
• Define an infinite number of customer-specific rule sets that ensure accurate rates and discounts are applied in real time that trigger automatic parcel shipment invoices.
• Simplify customer billing management, leading to a reduction in labor costs for Stord’s financial and operations teams, an increase in customer satisfaction, and a new value-add for customers and prospects.

“Enveyo further supports our mission to offer world-class Cloud Supply Chain technology for leading brands,” comments Steve Swan, Stord’s Vice President of Supply Chain. “Customers can plug into our integrated platform without needing the knowledge of how to weave through the nuances of the parcel costing landscape, and the Enveyo partnership is a huge piece of delivering on that mission for Stord.”

Saddle Creek Logistics Services

Shipping nearly 50 million parcels annually from 54 distribution centers nationwide brings with it great complexity, including the processes surrounding parcel analytics and billing management for leading 3PL, Saddle Creek Logistics Services.

The parcel team at Saddle Creek wanted to address three primary challenges:

1. Lack of visibility for Saddle Creek’s clients into parcel carrier performance data and associated costs.
2. Time-consuming and manual 3PL billing management processes that resulted in elevated operational overhead and delayed invoicing.
3. Need to provide comprehensive parcel shipping solutions for clients.

Saddle Creek sought a shipping optimization software provider with expertise in big data management to streamline and automate their complex parcel analytics and billing processes.

Saddle Creek was looking for a shipping software provider that could:

• Integrate with any carrier system and Saddle Creek’s internal business systems
• Deliver a SaaS solution with out-of-the-box functionality as well as flexibility to customize
• Create rulesets specific to the needs of their business and provide greater visibility into shipment program data
• Provide a customer-facing portal for Saddle Creek’s clients to access comprehensive parcel shipping data
• Reduce the amount of time from carrier bill received to client invoiced

“We implemented Enveyo Insights as our parcel analytics tool to offer shippers much-needed transparency into their parcel data and costs,” said Megan Rudolph, Senior Director of Strategic Parcel Operations at Saddle Creek. “With this new functionality, our clients also have visibility into carrier performance, so they can ensure their parcel solution optimizes costs while still meeting the end customer’s delivery expectations.”

Conclusion

E-commerce brands want their 3PL partners to be technology providers. Enveyo Insights enables Stord, Saddle Creek, and other 3PLs to be just that for their fast-growing segments of parcel shippers. The level of data transparency Enveyo provides 3PLs and their customers empowers the entire operation to turn shipping into a competitive advantage.

Are you a 3PL struggling with complex parcel analytics and billing management challenges? Contact us to chat about how we can help you streamline your processes.

The latest update to Enveyo shipping optimization software includes one new feature release and two feature enhancements.

1. Single Sign On

A new feature release to Enveyo software enables users to leverage Single Sign On (SSO) functionality with their Google or other SSO account to login to their Enveyo App.

Rather than relying on an Enveyo-specific username/email and password, users can now login to Enveyo using their organization’s authentication/SSO method to gain efficiency and simplify account administration.

 

2. Rate Group API Endpoints

A new set of API Endpoints has been released for the Enveyo API. These new endpoints allow users to manage shipping Rate Groups using API calls rather than going through the Company Admin screens in the web app.

This new enhancement allows parcel shippers to be more agile in creating and shifting rate groups as business needs change. For example, shippers may need to use one set of rate groups during peak season, on Black Friday, or Cyber Monday versus lower-volume shipping seasons.

For technical details on how to format and make calls to these new API Endpoints, please contact your Enveyo Account Manager or reach out to support@enveyo.com for Enveyo API documentation.

 

3. Offset Date Range in Dataset Scheduler

The Dataset Scheduler feature has been enhanced to enable an offset range.

Prior to introducing Offset Date Ranges, users were limited to defining their report’s date range to a period of the last X days. Users now have the ability to indicate how many days offset they want their date range to be for a more specific date selection.

For example, a user can schedule a report to generate shipment data from 3-10 days ago rather than selecting the last 7 days.

The Dataset Scheduler enables users to schedule shipment reports for a defined date range and automatically deliver that report via different methods.

Enveyo’s cloud-based shipping optimization software offers regular new feature releases and enhancements based on client business needs and supply chain market demands. We continuously improve our software so you can continuously optimize your shipping operation.

Enveyo’s Supply Chain Optimization Software Expands Stord’s Parcel Analytics Reporting Suite

Enveyo, a leading shipping optimization software provider, announced today that its cloud-based, parcel shipping analytics solution, Insights, was selected by Stord, the Cloud Supply Chain leader, to enhance shipment program visibility for its growing customer segment of e-commerce shippers. Stord’s implementation of Enveyo Insights expands its Cloud Supply Chain offering, giving leading brands the power to turn their shipping operations into a competitive advantage.

Through integration with Stord’s vast network of carriers and internal business systems, Enveyo Insights powers a customer-facing, Stord-branded portal reporting on real-time, comprehensive parcel shipping data specific to each customer’s shipments, including:

• Carrier time in transit
• Delivery exceptions
• Service & accessorial charges
• Time from ordered to delivered
• Package status
• and more

Additionally, the Enveyo implementation enables the Stord team to streamline its customer billing management processes through dynamic business logic and automated invoice creation.

“The parcel carrier market creates complexity for shippers, which can hinder optimization,” says Steve Swan, Stord’s Vice President of Supply Chain. “Integrating Enveyo with our Cloud Supply Chain technology increases efficiency in managing parcel complexity for shippers and streamlines invoicing for our financial and operations teams.”

The Enveyo Insights implementation ensures that when published carrier rates shift, Stord customers remain confident in always receiving 3PL market-leading discounted rates off the carrier’s published list price.

“The transparency the Enveyo implementation enables us to provide our customers is exciting because it improves accuracy, understanding, and most importantly, trust,” states Kyle VanGoethem, Stord’s Head of Network Planning.

Enveyo Insights empowers Stord to:

• Publish white-labeled, customer-facing dashboards with both pre-configured and customizable reports of comprehensive shipping data to meet each customer’s business needs
• Define an infinite number of customer-specific rule sets that ensure accurate rates and discounts are applied in real time
• Simplify customer billing management, leading to a reduction in labor costs, an increase in customer satisfaction, and a new value-add for customers and prospects

“Enveyo further supports our mission to offer world-class Cloud Supply Chain technology for leading brands,” comments Steve Swan. “Customers can plug into our integrated platform without needing the knowledge of how to weave through the nuances of the parcel costing landscape, and the Enveyo partnership is a huge piece of delivering on that mission for Stord.”

“We’re honored Stord chose Enveyo to enable greater visibility across their organization,” says Enveyo CEO & Co-Founder, Coby Nilsson. “Together, Enveyo and Stord present unparalleled expertise in simplifying the complexities of parcel shipping program visibility for brands that empowers them to turn their cost of doing business into a competitive advantage.”

To learn more about how Enveyo Insights enables greater supply chain visibility for 3PL providers like Stord, visit www.enveyo.com/3pl-solutions/.

About Enveyo
Enveyo is revolutionizing the way technology drives logistics. As the only multi-carrier parcel TMS provider enabling end-to-end supply chain visibility, organizations are optimizing their shipping operations with Enveyo’s cloud-based suite of solutions. Powered by a robust enterprise data management platform, Enveyo provides real-time access to meaningful reporting to increase efficiencies for customers across industries including retail, medical, aerospace, fulfillment & third-party logistics companies. To learn more about how Enveyo is revolutionizing logistics, visit enveyo.com.

About Stord
Stord is the pioneer of Cloud Supply Chain, enabling companies to compete and grow with world-class logistics — including warehousing, freight, and fulfillment — in a single, integrated platform that’s available exactly when and where they need it. Hundreds of B2B and B2C companies like BodyArmor, Advanced AutoParts, and Dollar General use Stord to make their supply chains perform with the speed, flexibility, and ease of the cloud. Led by former operators from Amazon, XPO, and Manhattan Associates, Stord is headquartered in Atlanta and backed by Kleiner Perkins, BOND, Founders Fund, Lux Capital, D1 Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Susa Ventures, and Lineage Logistics.

Two years. That’s how long has passed since the world as we knew it changed. Parents got notifications that school was cancelled, employees got notice to stay home, the world started buying most of their goods online, and the global supply chain did a collective * gulp. *

We’ve had many ups and downs since March of 2020, but one up that has continued its upward trend, is e-commerce purchase volume. Over the past two years, e-commerce brands have learned a lot. Better sourcing processes, how to implement omnichannel fulfillment, and creative solutions for labor shortages. But one thing that still needs to take hold with the e-commerce market is this –

E-Commerce brands are no longer just product companies. They’re shipping companies.

The e-commerce shipping landscape looks quite a bit different from what it did just two years ago. Consumers are demanding and they know exactly what they want – fast, reliable, and cheap shipping options. And they’ll make buying decisions based on their shipping experience.

The shipping experience now defines the shopping experience.

So, if you don’t have clear visibility into your entire shipping program, your delivery experience will suffer, which directly impacts customer loyalty and growth.

Shipping operations have become enormously more complex and difficult to manage as carriers continue to have tight capacity due to high demand and an ongoing labor shortage. Your carrier strategy is the area that needs focus in 2022. A multi-carrier parcel shipping strategy is what will separate those who still think they’re just product companies from those who know they’re shipping companies.

 

Multi-Carrier Parcel Shipping Strategy: Where to Start?

 

There’s a lot of buzz around the carrier capacity crunch, and the solution verdict is in – a multi-carrier parcel shipping strategy is the secret sauce.

If you haven’t yet jumped into the multi-carrier shipping pool, you may be asking yourself a few questions:

1. Why is a multi-carrier strategy better?
2. What carriers should I evaluate?
3. How do I know if I’m getting a good deal with these carriers?
4. When should I start negotiating?
5. How do I ensure that our discounts with our primary carrier stay intact?

Great questions, we would love to help you answer them.

Why is a multi-carrier parcel shipping strategy better?

One of the most pressing issues facing e-commerce shippers is the capacity limit put in place by carriers. Shippers who standardized with a single carrier to secure higher volume-based rates, found themselves with their hands tied as e-commerce exploded. Carrier networks became overloaded, a shortage of drivers created inefficiencies, and volume caps were handed out. Meaning that when your carrier capped your shipping volume, you were at risk of getting the products your customers ordered to them within the timeframe you promised. Or worse yet, getting their order to them at all.

To ensure you can deliver on your promises to your customers as well as gain competitive advantage, diversifying your carrier mix is the long-term strategy. Expanding your carrier portfolio has a wide range of benefits, including:

• Reduced costs. Through automated carrier rate shopping, you can select the best carrier based on lowest rate, fastest transit, accessorial charges, and any combination of variables to ensure the lowest cost to your business.
• Increased sales. Today, consumers want to choose when and by what method orders are delivered. Presenting options at checkout enhances the customer delivery experience, which is directly tied to sales.
• Agility. When market conditions rapidly shift like they did two years ago, a multi-carrier parcel shipping strategy ensures that you can pivot quickly where needed.

According to a Bloomberg article highlighting a September 2021 conference call with analysts, Chief Marketing Officer for FedEx, Brie Carere, shared that the parcel market is expected to grow 10% annually through 2026. Continued parcel shipping growth coupled with ongoing parcel shipping volume caps by major carriers means that e-commerce shippers must become more flexible with their carrier mix.

What carriers should I evaluate?

Not only is e-commerce exploding, but the growth in new carriers to support shippers is also growing very quickly, particularly in the middle and final mile spaces. The starting point to evaluate your list of potential new carriers is to take a deep dive into your shipping program data and identify where are you hurting the most. Find the pain point(s).

From a high level, you want to better understand what you are doing well and what you aren’t doing well. And analyze that data by carrier. For example, if your major carrier is high performing 90% of the time, what does the 10% they’re not doing well represent?

Here are a few data segments that can often lead to a light-bulb moment:

• Low performing regions or markets
• Average time in transit for a particular service
• High cost due to package size or weight
• Carriers with higher accessorial charges

The key is to isolate data segments of high cost and low performance, then evaluate carriers with a solution that can be deployed to solve your challenge. There may just be a regional carrier that can pick up this volume for a cheaper cost than your primary carrier.

As major carriers have less pricing flexibility and more surcharges, regional carriers like LaserShip / OnTrac and Lone Star Overnight (LSO) are positioning themselves nicely to help shippers compete in this complex parcel shipping landscape.

How do I know if I’m getting a good deal with these carriers?

Once you have a good understanding of your current parcel shipping performance and the carriers that you want to evaluate, then you model scenarios to future outcomes through comparing carrier proposals.

Modeling future shipping scenarios helps you see the long-term impact of your decisions before you make them. Even small, seemingly insignificant changes to your parcel shipping program can have considerable implications down the road.

A carrier proposal model looks at every relevant variable of your current shipping program and compares it to each carrier’s proposal to help you identify both risks and opportunities in your multi-carrier parcel shipping strategy. For example:

• Can a carrier reduce time in transit for my deliveries without increasing costs?
• How will my discounts shift across services as my volume grows?
• Which carrier is the most cost-effective for my big & bulky shipments?

Let the data tell the story, and more importantly, determine the appropriate course of action to optimize your parcel shipping program.

When should I start negotiating?

Yesterday. With the volatility of the e-commerce shipping market, carriers have been marking earlier new-customer cutoff dates each year. Starting early is the name of the game. The sooner you can create a diversified mix of carriers, the better you will execute in balancing capacity among them, leading to optimized and agile shipping operations that are primed for volume spikes and peak season.

Understanding both what you offer to the carrier as well as how the carrier is performing for you are crucial to understand before sitting down at the negotiating table. For instance, carrier’s have different strengths and competencies. If you are a shipper with a high volume of heavy goods, you are likely more attractive to a carrier that excels in ground deliveries. If you understand how you make the carrier money as well as their areas of low performance, you are more likely to strike an agreement that is mutually beneficial, rather than simply being a cash cow for the carrier.

Prior to heading into carrier evaluation & negotiations, make sure multi-carrier parcel shipping software is a line item in your budget. Too often, companies find themselves struggling to compete on shipping in Q4 when they’re standardized on a single carrier and don’t have the relationships or technology in place to support a diversified carrier strategy. Taking a forward-looking approach here will help ensure that you don’t find yourself in a situation where you’re unable to pivot because software wasn’t a line item on the budget so you must wait another full fiscal year to diversify your carrier mix and optimize your shipping program.

Start early. Budget for multi-carrier shipping software. You’ll thank us later.

How do I ensure that our discounts with our primary carrier stay intact?

Automation. Prior to implementing a multi-carrier parcel shipping strategy, ensure you have flexible technology in place that enables automated shipping rule sets.

Implementing a transportation management system (TMS) that integrates seamlessly with your warehouse management system (WMS), e-commerce shopping carts, carrier systems, and other business systems comes first.

Next, make sure your TMS allows you to create dynamic rule sets specific to the needs of your business. Automated rule sets that select the carrier at the time the order is placed is how you ensure your primary carrier discounts will remain intact.

Allocating the right percentage of volume to your primary carrier is the first step in staying compliant with your contract. You can also create rules based on your revenue band commitment to ensure you don’t fall below it and risk falling into a lower discount tier.

Additional automated rule sets can be created to divert excess volume to your non-primary carriers once your primary carrier commitments have been hit, and there are several ways to optimize the selection process through business rules. Here are a few examples of business logic to select the right carrier –

“Ship everything through my primary carrier until I hit my revenue band, then…”

• Rate shop to select the carrier with the lowest rate
• Review time in transit for each carrier, and select the carrier with the shortest time
• For larger package sizes, review DIM fees and other accessorial charges and select the lowest overall cost

The business rules that you define in your TMS need to be easily configurable. If tomorrow your primary carrier tells you your capacity will be limited again unless you sign a new contract with higher rates, you need to be sure your system will allow for a quick pivot that puts your business in the best position possible.

Gain Agility With Enveyo

The key to a successful multi-carrier parcel shipping strategy is flexibility. Shippers that have technology in place that enables them to be agile and quickly pivot when unexpected market shifts occur will have the upper hand long-term.

Enveyo’s multi-carrier parcel shipping software enables full visibility across your supply chain, the agility to pivot quickly when needed, and the power to turn your shipping costs into a competitive advantage. Learn more about Enveyo’s solutions.

Sarah Barnes-Humphrey, Founder of Let’s Talk Supply Chain, interviews Coby Nilsson, Enveyo’s CEO & Co-Founder on the importance of greater visibility in today’s supply chains.

At Manifest: The Future of Logistics industry event, Enveyo’s CEO & Co-Founder, Coby Nilsson, sat on the Digitization & Visibility panel, A Window Into Visibility, with other supply chain visibility experts. This article will share Coby’s insights into the topic that’s at the top of shippers’ lists…

Supply Chain Visibility

If it wasn’t already a major focus area for you, it certainly is now. We can thank the pandemic for that, which accelerated several aspects of our industry, and the need for end-to-end visibility is up there as one of the biggest. But before we begin to transform our supply chain visibility, it is important to answer – how do we define it? It differs depending on where you sit in the chain, and we will first define it from our own perspectives during this conversation.

Sarah Barnes-Humphrey: Hello everyone! It is so great to be back in person and see familiar faces from the online world in person! My name is Sarah Barnes-Humphrey: I’m the founder and host of Let’s Talk Supply Chain and I’ll be your host for today’s panel discussion.

It is very rare that we have four vendors that solve different challenges on stage together to talk about the variations of visibility. I don’t know about you, but when I speak to different people there seem to be different versions of what visibility is and the role it should play. So, in today’s session, we are going to hear straight from the sources how they are thinking about visibility, how their customers are thinking about visibility and real stories of how organizations are using visibility in their supply chains as competitive advantage and the ROI they are seeing.

So welcome to Coby Nilsson, Loudon Owen, Kent Ledgerwood and Chris Georgen who are going to shine a light on this growing trend for us today. Thank you for joining us.

Let’s start with some introductions. Can you tell me who you are, what you do, and what you find most exciting or interesting about supply chain visibility?

Coby Nilsson: Thanks, Sarah. And thanks to the Manifest team for having us; we’re excited to be here.

Hi everyone, I’m Coby Nilsson, and I’m the CEO & Co-Founder of Enveyo. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Enveyo provides a logistics optimization software platform that enables end-to-end supply chain visibility. We like to say, “visibility enabled from click to ding dong,” or management of the entire lifecycle of the order – from purchase to delivery.

In terms of what I find most exciting; supply chain visibility is foundational to everything that follows a purchase event – the intelligent orchestration as well as communication with and management of the customer experience.

Logistics is really hard right? We’re dealing with extremely elevated consumer expectations all while the landscape, rules and partners we rely on to help us succeed are evolving on a daily basis. We simply can’t address our operational challenges if we can’t see them. So at Enveyo, we’re extremely passionate about helping logistics leaders like yourselves simplify the complex and SEE what’s happening so that you can make business-transforming decisions.

Sarah Barnes-Humphrey: Let’s define what we mean by visibility across the supply chain. How you are thinking about it inside your organization and how your customers are thinking about visibility?

Coby Nilsson: That’s a great question, Sarah, because I do think organizations may look at this a bit differently than one another depending on their products or services.

Visibility across the supply chain has many stakeholders. Shippers, carriers, and consumers are the big ones, right, but we can make that group more complex by introducing 3PLs and 4PLs, as well as national, regional, and final mile carriers if we’re just thinking domestically here. These stakeholders across the supply chain need visibility into so many data points – sourcing, inventory, orders placed & shipped, package location, carrier exceptions, packages delivered… and that’s the short list. On top of that, stakeholders need to know where they’re winning and where they’re losing so they can make necessary shifts to gain the competitive advantage and ROI you mentioned earlier. Ever evolving market and supply chain conditions further complicate the quest for greater visibility.

The way we think about this challenge at Enveyo is through a data-first mindset. The data points I mentioned are often found in many different silos & systems, so to attain the visibility that supply chain stakeholders demand, the decentralized state of their data makes the first step quite difficult.

Centralizing and standardizing your supply chain data is an essential step towards visibility because it eliminates noise and potential missteps brought by human error and data silos. Shippers need to have the information and the agility to pivot when needed. Once you have clear visibility into all your shipping program data, the strategy forward becomes clear as well.

Sarah Barnes-Humphrey: Next let’s get into some storytelling and real-life examples so the audience can really picture how your solutions and visibility can give them an edge. Tell me what was the challenge a customer came to you with, what was the solution you provided and what was the ROI they experienced?

Coby Nilsson: Circling back to what I previously mentioned about increased complexity with supply chain stakeholders as we think about visibility specifically with 3PL providers, I’ll share a recent success story about our customer, Saddle Creek Logistics Services.

Saddle Creek’s customers, just like the rest of the market, were demanding more visibility into their parcel shipment data. When you think about 3PL parcel shipping operations and the complexity that accompanies that with a 3PL the size of Saddle Creek, supplying all their customers with real-time parcel analytics was a challenge. Saddle Creek turned to our team at Enveyo to help enable that real-time visibility.

Through implementation of our integrated parcel analytics platform, Insights, they are able to publish white-labeled reports & dashboards for each of their customers that display their unique parcel shipping data.

So what does that mean?

Saddle Creek is now the source of visibility for their customers. Those customers now have real-time visibility into key performance indicators like carrier time in transit, delivery status, delivery exceptions, and they can drill down on speed and costs by carrier to analyze their performance.

Because the parcel market is constantly evolving, it’s critical to understand how carrier changes impact costs and delivery experience, and it’s the data sourcing & interpretation of that data that’s been a major challenge for shippers. Saddle Creek can now offer our white-labeled parcel analytics platform as a value-added service to their customers which helps to increase their sales, customer onboarding and retention as well.

It’s this level of visibility we get excited about enabling for our customers at Enveyo because great brands have made some pretty cool shifts that have driven amazing results.

Sarah Barnes-Humphrey: Lastly, one of the most important things I think we can do on stage and at the end of the discussion is to give the audience something to walk away with, to consider to think about or to implement. What would you like to contribute to that?

Coby Nilsson: What I often say when talking with shippers about how to solve their visibility challenges is, “let us show you what you don’t know.” For companies like Saddle Creek, and likely many other shippers here at Manifest, decentralized shipping data can be a major barrier to achieving greater visibility, Data is the solution when looking at it through the right lens.

We all know that pandemic-related disruptions have shifted how our entire global supply chain functions. While these disruptions were unanticipated and largely unavoidable over the past 23 months, I’d like you to walk away from this session thinking about thoroughly analyzing your supply chain & shipping processes holistically, because the game changes this year. We can’t claim surprise in 2022.

Integrating and normalizing your parcel shipping data is the solution to start answering your unanswered questions and most certainly will result in competitive advantage and ROI this year and for years to come.

Sarah Barnes-Humphrey: Well, that brings us to the end of today’s panel discussion. Thank you so much to Coby, Loudon, Kent and Chris for your invaluable knowledge and insight – I really enjoyed the session and learned a lot. The growth in visibility, in actually quite a short space of time, is exciting and it really helps to give us all hope as we, as an industry, continue to face widespread disruption. Visibility has the power to transform our supply chains and I’m looking forward to seeing what it could potentially open up for all of us.

Thank you to you, the audience – I hope you enjoyed the session and, of course, do feel free to connect with us during the show. And I want to say a final big thank you to Manifest for organizing this incredible event and getting us all together once again – thank you. And I’ll see you all soon, bye!

SupplyChainBrain Editor in Chief, Bob Bowman, interviews Enveyo CEO & Co-Founder, Coby Nilsson, on the launch of Enveyo Alerting

SupplyChainBrain‘s Editor in Chief, Bob Bowman, sat down with Enveyo CEO & Co-Founder, Coby Nilsson, to learn more about the recent launch of Enveyo Alerting, delivery experience management platform.

Watch the interview to learn about:

• The features & benefits of Alerting
• Why Enveyo launched Alerting to the market now
• How Alerting supports shippers’ quest for greater visibility
• How Alerting is different from other delivery experience management platforms

[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YJ4vISDucI” el_width=”70″ align=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Customers want fast and affordable shipping. But meeting these expectations is challenging without clear visibility into your supply chain. In this blog, we look at how parcel shipping analytics software can turn your data into winning decisions.

Being a shipper in today’s e-commerce environment is challenging. On the one hand, you want to please your customers by getting packages delivered quickly and cost-effectively. On the other hand, you have supply chain challenges that increase delivery times and shipping costs.

How can shippers overcome these hurdles and come out on top? The answer is parcel shipping analytics.

What Is Parcel Shipping Analytics?

 

In simple terms, parcel shipping analytics involves the analysis of big data. Parcel shipping analytics is necessary due to the rise in e-commerce. Adobe projects e-commerce will hit $4.2 trillion in 2021, and the numbers will only go up from there.

But with the current global supply chain challenges making it difficult to ship packages on time and on budget, it’s time for shippers to take a good look at their operations to see what they are doing right and where they can improve. To do this, you need automation tools that collect and highlight actionable data.

Parcel Shipping Analytics Software: 3 Must-Have Tools

 

E-commerce is all about data, which is why it’s crucial to have parcel shipping analytics software that keeps your data clean and up to date every time a worker scans a package.

But just having this data isn’t enough; you need tools that can comb through the information to be better informed when making big decisions. For example, whether you should add a new carrier to avoid capacity restrictions and get packages to customers on time, or if you should renegotiate your carrier contracts to ensure you’re getting the best rates for every service.

The ideal parcel shipping analytics software includes three automation tools to help you on your quest for supply chain success:

1. Parcel spend management
2. Delivery experience management
3. Logistics optimization

1. Parcel Spend Management

A parcel spend management tool is crucial for parcel shipping analytics because it gives insight into your supply chain costs at every level. Comprehensive reporting provides data that you can utilize to increase efficiency and save money.

For example, a 3PL provider, Saddle Creek Logistics Services, added a time-in-transit dashboard to expand its parcel analytics reporting suite. The new feature provided extensive visibility for Saddle Creek and their customers into delivery metrics to improve parcel shipping management while controlling costs.

Using charts, heat maps and other visuals, the Saddle Creek team optimized costs while meeting the customer’s delivery expectations.

Saddle Creek wasn’t the only company to utilize a parcel spend shipping management tool to their advantage:

• CooperVision saved more than $4.7 million in contracted shipping costs
• A leading managed healthcare services provider saved more than 14% in parcel shipping costs

A parcel spend management tool also enables comparative analytics, which helps to compare carrier performance and benchmark against accessible, real-world data. That information gives you leverage for negotiating terms based on specific shipping patterns, weights and service types.

To get an accurate, holistic view of your parcel spend, you need a tool that keeps track of packages throughout their lifecycle. You need a delivery experience management tool.

2. Delivery Experience Management

Delivery experience management software helps improve customer satisfaction and drive brand loyalty by alerting customers when their orders are received, shipped and delivered. But this information is also vital to shippers. Knowing how long it takes for packages to get from the warehouse to a customer’s front door, and seeing the variance by carrier and zone, helps to optimize this process moving forward.

Using comprehensive shipment reporting, shippers can see real-time data on carrier time in transit, an overview of the package status, total exceptions, accessorials, and so much more. This information can be used to help trigger various questions, including:

• Should I add more national, regional, or final mile carriers?
• Do I need a new distribution center to ship through fewer zones? Or perhaps a 3PL partner?
• Why is my shipping spend going up while my volume stays the same?

Once you have your questions, it’s time to answer them using predictive analytics.

3. Logistics Optimization

A logistics optimization tool incorporates real shipping data into modeling scenarios so you can understand the potential outcome before you execute.

For example, after looking at the data collected from your time in transit dashboard, it looks like you would benefit from distributing shipping volume across multiple carriers. But which carriers and what percentage of your volume is the right mix?

With logistics optimization software, you can look at every variable, from service types and rates to shipment volume trends by geography and regional carrier coverage, to determine the best possible outcome for your multi-carrier shipping strategy. You may even find that it makes sense to consider zone skipping or partnering with a 3PL provider to reduce time in transit when shipping to far-distant zones. But you can only see these solutions if you have the right tool to show you.

Take Action With a Cloud Transportation Management System

All the tools mentioned so far work together to give you answers to your shipping questions. But to efficiently act on them, you need a cloud transportation management system (TMS). A cloud-based TMS creates streamlined, automated rules for your shipping process, helping you make decisions that make sense for your company, carriers, and customers.

Using a TMS, you can create custom shipping rulesets that turn your business objectives into reality. The rulesets can define variables, including:

• The specific volume of packages to ship through each carrier while fulfilling contractual agreements
• When to ship with the carrier’s lowest rate, shortest route, or consider both
• When to use flat-rate shipping
• When to bulk ship and zone skip for far zone shipping

That way, you can automatically determine the optimal delivery for every package that saves your organization time, money, and headaches.

Conclusion

 

Navigating the challenging supply chain landscape is easier when you have parcel shipping analytics software on your side. The ideal software solution includes tools for parcel spend management, delivery experience management, logistics optimization and cloud transportation management.

With all these tools in one suite, you can consolidate and cleanse your data to ensure you have one source of truth before you make game-changing decisions that make the shipping experience better for your customers.

As e-commerce thrives, big data is just going to get bigger. Are you ready?

Enveyo’s multi-carrier shipping optimization software gives you actionable data for big decisions. Schedule a demo to see how your shipping program can benefit from our all-in-one software solution.