Blog
Author: Parcel BI
What is the Value of Connecting with Your Data?
How much money do you spend on parcel shipping a year? What would a 5%, 10 % or 25% reduction in that spend mean to you? What are you doing now to manage and limit the money you are paying to your parcel carriers? No matter how big or small your company is, you never want to waste your time and money. Most companies dont have an effective means to make sense of their invoices and find unnecessary shipping charges, corrections, or chargebacks. Business Intelligence is using data to make better business decisions and gain insight. Parcel BI provides you with business intelligence tools that empower you to take control of your parcel spend without wasting time. Quickly Find Savings Connecting to data can provide savings in various ways, not everything is obvious An example of one of our customers who does not have a very high parcel spend, less than two hundred thousand dollars annually. This particular customer is an omnichannel shipper, meaning they ship outbound on their customers
Understanding How Shipper of Record Affects Parcel Spend
A shipper of record is the company that is initially shipping out a package, not necessarily the company paying for the shipping. For example, you could be shipping something to your customer on their account, and you think that youre not paying for anything because they are the ones who will be charged for shipping costs. However, there are certain charges that you could be subject to that you may not be aware of. What are Charges You Need to be Aware of as the Shipper of Record? Address Corrections: If you ship out a package to your customer but entered the wrong address, you are subject to the address correction fees, not the billed account! This comes as a surprise to many shippers who do a lot of third party shipping. At $16 or more, these charges can add up fast! Invalid Accounts: If your customer has given you the wrong account information or their information has expired, but you ship using that invalid account, you will have to pay a fee for that and may be subject to a
How Parcel BI Makes Managing Many Accounts Easier
E-commerce is a huge part of how we buy these days, and as a result, it has really changed the game for business supply chains and logistics. Many retailers are now shipping out of various locations across the country, the continent of the world. As a result, they are managing dozens if not hundreds of different accounts. We call these omnichannel; companies that are fulfilling from multiple brick and mortar operations as well as distribution centers. Some organizations have accounts for multiple carriers at a single location, or accounts designated for different purposes as well. Death by 1,000 Paper Cuts The more accounts to manage, the more invoices to review and process. The greater the opportunity to miss opportunities to reduce spend and to leak money. Managing a handful of accounts is challenging enough, but multiply the possible errors by dozens or hundreds of accounts and the potential to miss things and have things such as late charges, chargebacks, audit fees, etc. just
Parcel BI Exposes Costly Late Fees
Many companies spending lots of money on parcel are leaking money in areas that they may not realize. Parcel BI offers easy to use tools to help expose these leaks and show these companies how they can save on their parcel spending long term. One of the most subtle areas many companies lose money is on late fees. Standard terms for the major parcel carriers are paying your bills Net 15. In manyof these companies, the people who are in charge of accounts payable may not be aware of this. This leads to the company not paying their parcel bills on time, which can add significant cost.The carrier that assesses these does not mind keeping you in the dark because it makes them a lot of extra revenue. Late Fees Are Subtle Unfortunately, late fees go unnoticed all the time, and the more accounts you have, the bigger the problem can be. Common reasons for a company racking up late fees are anywhere from their accounts payable not realizing the due dates to not realizing they had their bills
How Parcel BI Exposes Shipping Charge Corrections
A shipping charge correction is when the costs for a package to be delivered are adjusted(typically increased) after the package was processed. These corrections can cost your business a lot of money, and they can be adjusted for many reasons. The important thing to understand is that corrections are changing your expected costs for shipping vs. your actual costs. If you are operating under the assumption that what you think it will cost to ship a package is the actual cost, then you are operating under incomplete or incorrect information. Thisleads to lost margin. What Can Cause a Shipping Correction? Some common examples of charge corrections include: The weight ofa package was entered wrong which can also cause the cost to go up The dimensional weight (DIM)is weight based on the volume (height x width x length) of the package, not the actual weight. The Shipper will charge you whichever is higher. Residential and commercial shipping charges vary just because youre shipping to
Parcel BI vs. Audits -- Why Parcel Shippers Need to Connect to Data
Parcel BI is a business intelligence tool that helps companies whoship with UPS, FedEx, and other parcel carriers, understand the cost ofthe whole picture. Theresa lot of data involved in parcel shipping, and its very cumbersome to try to get your arms around. Audits are one way to help reduce spending, but its really the last step, not the first. There are many factors that go into the shipping process that drive up costs. Auditing invoices help youget some money back from the carriers when they dont deliver on time, and its a good practice, but there are much bigger savings opportunities that Parcel BI exposes. AUDITS VS. PARCEL BI Audits are helping you save after the fact,but Parcel BI reveals the processesfor you to realize long term savings beyond carrier mistakes. We help you set your companys policies and understand what youre doing to put process improvements in place. Our systems help you manage the data and find the other errors and costs that an audit just doesnt address. GREAT
Join Parcel BI at Parcel Forum 18 in Chicago at Booth 434
stop by booth 434 to see parcel bi in action We are proud to be exhibiting at Parcel Forum 2018, the only conference dedicated to serving the unique and ever-changing needs of professionals who are responsible for the shipping, warehousing, packaging, distribution and delivery of parcels. Parcel BI will be bringing its game changing analytic tools for the second year running to show attendees how we can expose savings in their parcel spend. This event will be filled with leaders in transportation, shipping and procurement, logistics/supply chain, distribution and warehouse, IT/Systems and more. There will be a conference, exhibit, and special events.Visit the website to learn more. What to Expect. Parcel BI will be demoing our BI parcel solutionsat ourbooth this year. Our tools range from a Profitability Parcel Audit tool to Contract Edge solutions that allow you to compare and negoatiate your contracts. As a special promotion for attendees of the show, well be scheduling demos
BI Solutions Boost Shipping Efficiency and Save You Money
Having visibility into the detail of your parcel carrier bills can expose opportunities totrim your parcel costs. Operational and contractual rate improvements reduce your shipping budget, increasing your bottom line. You can sift through your bills, or download them into an excel spreadsheet, but then you are sacrificing time, unable to get to the details you need easily. Utilizing an effective data visualization solution, or Business Intelligence (BI), enables you to identify the changes needed without expending more man hours. We have spent over a year producing what we see as the industry leading BI tool for managing parcel spend, called appropriately enough: Parcel BI How does ParcelBIboost shipping efficiency? ParcelBI reduces parcel spend by: Exposing Shipments With Large Packaging Fees You are well aware that packaging impacts shipping costs. BI analytics, like ones that can be given to you through ParcelBI, cangive you a streamlined way to look at what you ship, so you can
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