Unified Carrier Management Just got Even Stronger
While the World Bank believes that the risk of a global recession has reduced, geopolitical tensions still pose a threat to financial growth. In this turbulent landscape, many companies are focused on optimizing costs and processes across their organizations—and logistics operations are no exception.
Businesses spend tens of thousands of Euros on integrating new carriers into their systems, which is a costly venture when juggling multiple carriers. Enterprises are grappling with critical challenges in their logistics operations, including the lengthy and expensive process of integrating new carriers, soaring shipping costs, and a lack of visibility are at the heart of the problem. Without real-time updates and estimated times of arrival, businesses cannot respond to delays or reroute shipments, which can impact inventory costs and customer satisfaction.
Leading companies like Sidas Group, V33, and Mister-Auto are implementing multi-carrier management software that integrates multiple carriers, provides complete visibility into shipment tracking, and delivers savings of between 3 and 5% on overall freight costs by streamlining the edition and expedition of labels for expeditions. In this whitepaper, we’ll detail these solutions and show how multi-carrier management platforms such as TDI’s Expedito platform can make a difference.
and expensive process
For many businesses, expanding their shipping capabilities to meet global demand makes integrating new carriers into their existing logistics process essential.
Relying on a single carrier may limit the shipping options available to customers, particularly for international shipments or specialized services. However, integrating a new carrier can be a lengthy and expensive process, costing more than €10,000 per carrier, and taking months to complete.
The process of integrating systems and ensuring compatibility across different carriers’ platforms can prevent a business’s ability to adapt to market changes or capitalize on new opportunities. This challenge is made worse by the high costs companies charge for carrier development, an activity Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Transportation Management Systems (TMS), and warehouse management Systems (WMS) providers are often reluctant to take.
In addition, the lack of experience in businesses to effectively manage these integrations adds another layer of complexity. The necessity to keep updating connection versions or formats of labels and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) protocols takes considerable work and effort.
This integration process is not only a time-consuming task but also places a lot of strain on IT teams, which further complicates a business’ operational efficiency.
- Price variations of 30 to 40%: Carriers have different parameters and characteristics to determine shipping prices.
- It has become increasingly difficult to meet the specific requirements of carriers, often influenced by geopolitical factors and regulatory changes.
- When shipping globally, communication between shippers and carriers can be delayed, and incidents missed as a result.
- E-commerce companies often deal with a high volume of orders, diverse product types, and multiple shipping destinations. Managing these complexities manually can lead to inefficiencies, errors, and higher costs.
Another critical issue facing businesses today is the escalating cost of shipping, which directly impacts profit margins and overall financial health. Several factors contribute to this challenge, including fluctuating fuel prices, carrier rate increases, and the complexity of managing logistics across diverse global markets.
Finding the right price/delivery ratio is an intricate task due to a multitude of weights, volumes, number of parcels, shipments, and services to manage that determine the transport price.
This is the case for the Sidas Group, a specialist in foot wellness and an expert in the design, manufacturing, and distribution of dedicated accessories for over 45 years.
Operating multiple brands across various markets, Sidas makes more than 50,000 shipments worldwide annually.
These shipments range from 300-gram parcels to containers, to destinations and product types that are entirely different. Calculating the costs manually and finding the best rates was a major concern, where shipping costs could vary by 30 to 40% from carrier to carrier.
Through a carrier management platform, businesses like Sidas gain access to tools that simplify the carrier selection process by comparing courier rates in real-time, identifying the most cost-effective shipping methods, and implementing strategies for volume discounts and rate negotiations—potentially gaining back up to 15% of their total shipping budget.
Another common obstacle in managing shipping operations is the lack of visibility and real-time tracking of shipments. This visibility gap leaves businesses and their customers in the dark about the status of deliveries, which leads to frustration and dissatisfied customers.
Ensuring accurate order fulfillment, on-time deliveries, and transparent shipping tracking is essential for success in the e-commerce landscape.
When managing shipments, businesses often have to manually follow up on each individual carrier and order by phone or email. This is particularly difficult to manage for companies like Mister-Auto, which ships millions of orders annually and offers over fifty transport services across 20 countries.
This enterprise aims to deliver within 48 hours. Without visibility into the progress of its deliveries, and incidents causing delays, the company cannot measure compliance with commitments and the quality of service of their carriers—ultimately impacting its relationships with customers.
Through a carrier management system, the company is able to carry out in-depth analysis and continuous improvement of operations.
System Can Help
Making the switch to a Carrier Management System (CMS) can address the issues of integrating carriers, shipping costs, and visibility. A CMS solution, such as Expedito from TDI, enables businesses to manage all of their carriers at the same time and drastically reduce carrier integration costs to the price of one carrier. Additionally, these solutions improve carrier rate selection and shipment tracking.
With a CMS, companies can also automate shipping label generation, right carrier selection, parcel tracking, anomaly detection in shipments, and analyze carrier performance. In addition, with a CMS capable of integrating with over 260 carriers and interfacing with leading Warehouse Management Systems, businesses gain access to carrier rates and transit times to select the best carrier.
A paint and wood product specialist, V33, initiated a logistics and IT transformation in 2019 where they incorporated advanced warehouse management and label printing solutions.
The company processes approximately 600 orders daily, 10,000 order lines, and 120 tons of products. Nearly a third of these orders are subject to ADR (European Agreement concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Road). Furthermore, e-commerce activity requires integrating express carriers and single-parcel carriers into the existing network of courier service providers.
V33 partnered with TDI to implement a system that automates label, transport document, and EDI file printing to meet carrier requirements efficiently. This integration streamlined the label printing process for around 600 daily orders, ensuring the shipment of orders and ultimately, customer satisfaction.
TDI, by providing continuous assistance for any warehousing issues, such as printing labels, establishing connections with carriers, and rectifying incorrect EDI files, further helped to significantly enhance V33’s productivity and simplify compliance, especially for single-parcel carriers.
The support offered by TDI has now allowed V33 to explore expansion into its Polish subsidiary and potentially European operations, which highlights the effectiveness of this logistics and IT overhaul
TDI’s API modules can help you manage every part of the shipping cycle, from carrier selection to shipment tracking:
The Exwarning module enables the early detection of delivery anomalies, such as pending collection parcels or incorrect addresses, which allows companies to proactively resolve issues. This improves the overall customer experience by allowing enterprises to communicate in a timely manner with carriers and customers.
Additionally, Exintouch plays a crucial role in integrating delivery updates into the customer’s purchase journey. Providing regular updates at every step of the shipping process, it strengthens the bond with recipients and makes them feel more connected and informed.
Lastly, Experform empowers businesses to analyze their transport service quality comprehensively. Now, enterprises can identify all the strengths and weaknesses in their transportation strategy and turn this data into actionable insights to enhance their performance...
TDI’s carrier management system streamlines shipping management by prioritizing the common pain points faced by enterprises and offering an effective solution for each one of them. TDI has built strong partnerships with carriers and has the right technical contacts on-site, allowing them to respond quickly and reactively to any malfunctions. This approach not only enables them to address issues promptly, but also allows them to provide proactive support. As a result, TDI can anticipate the carriers’ requests for upgrades and ensure continuous service, enhancing the overall shipping management process for their clients.
Expedito Premium, available in SaaS mode, simplifies, streamlines, and centralizes information-sharing between shippers and carriers on a single interface, allowing businesses to manage and track shipments across multiple carriers.
- 25 Years Experience
- Over 1000 shipping sites
- More than 260 integrated carriers
- 105 Million labels printed per year
- 500 million tracking events monitored annually
- Provides 100% tracking visibility
Efficiently operating with multiple carriers can be a headache and lead to errors and unhappy customers.
However, streamlining the process with a unified carrier management system can be a game-changer and save enterprises time and money.
If you’re interested in transforming your shipping operations, visit TDI’s website to discover tools that will help you manage your shipments easily and allow your business to broaden its horizons.