A Tale of Two Shippers – A Parable for Enterprise Shipping
Posted by Rachel Rodenborg on Wed, Aug 31, 2011 @ 09:31 AM
Once upon a time there were two shipping professionals.
The First Shipper.
The first shipper was buried in shipments that needed to be shipped by a variety of carriers: UPS, FedEx, United States Postal Service and a number of LTL companies. To complete his shipments, the shipper manually entered the package information into each of the carriers’ unique shipping systems. For some transactions he had to log into a computer terminal dedicated to that carrier’s services. For others, he had to log into the carrier’s web-based shipping program and process shipments that way. For still other shipments, he had to pick up the phone and call the carrier to secure shipment pricing and arrange pick up. It was time consuming and riddled with errors--with all that typing, the shipper had to be extra careful not to mistype information.
The first shipper worked hard each day and went home exhausted. His fingers ached from all of the manual data entry into each system. He always held his breath and hoped that the information had been inputted correctly and that there would be no errors to deal with in the future. The first shipper was never sure what he was going to walk into each day and met each work day with apprehension.
The Second Shipper.
The second shipper was also buried in shipments each day, but her work day looked markedly different than the first shipper’s. Instead of moving from dedicated terminal to online order system to the phone, the second shipper was able to process all of her shipments from one computer screen regardless of the carrier. She could quickly and easily process UPS, FedEx, USPS, and any number of LTL shipments without leaving her shipping system. What’s more, the shipping information from each order automatically appeared in her shipping software, increasing her speed and efficiency while saving her fingers from repetitive typing. She was also able to quickly see the shipping charges for each carrier by service and could even access negotiated shipping rates easily.
The second shipper worked hard each day, but left the warehouse with a sense of pride and accomplishment in the number of shipments she completed. The second shipper’s shipping software automatically generated the appropriate shipping documents for International and Hazardous Materials shipments and never required her to retype a shipping address, so she almost never experienced a shipping mistake. The second shipper was excited to go to work each day and looked forward to making an impact on the success of her company.
Question: Which shipper would you rather be?
The Morale of the Story.
The morale of the story is simple: work smarter, not harder. If your shipping system (or lack of one) has you entering shipment information into different systems and trying to remember what paperwork goes with each shipment type, you are opening yourself up to errors, exhaustion, and a negative impact on the bottom line. Don’t let yourself be Shipper #1.
To learn more about how to revolutionize your enterprise shipping department and cut costs while improving efficiency, watch the on-demand webinar, Seeing (Shipping) is Believing! today.
