Tag: margin management

Navigating Small Parcel Rates and Capacity ‘Perfect Storm’ in 2021

Posted on | by Todd Benge and Charles Moore

The first quarter of 2021 promises to bring much of the same volatility and uncertainty to the small parcel rates and capacity environment . With the holiday season behind us, many service providers are now fully entrenched in a worldwide vaccine distribution effort in a shipping environment that was already more expensive and capacity constrained than it was a year ago.

Here’s what all shippers should know as we move out of the small parcel rates chaos of 2020 and into a New Year that promises even more challenges – and opportunities!

Small Parcel Capacity Lessons Learned from the Holiday Season

The 2020 holiday season was like no other. Record volumes of e-commerce orders  pushed major small parcel carriers to levy new fees while also capping volumes in order to balance their networks. Affecting ground, express, and postal service, very few shippers escaped the impact.

“As Americans increasingly shop online because of the coronavirus pandemic, private express carriers FedEx and UPS have cut off new deliveries for some retailers, sending massive volumes of packages ordered past deadlines to the Postal Service,” the Washington Post reported.

With capacity at a premium in the small package environment, shippers were left to their own devices when it came to getting their goods out the door and monitoring the cost and service impacts. We were called upon to help many companies as carriers took a brutally honest approach and let everyone know that they were buckling under the strain.

“We’re really gridlocked all over the place ,” a Postal Service manager told the Washington Post. “It’s bad. I’ve never seen it like this before.”

Navigating the Perfect Small Parcel Storm

With carriers implementing caps in order to avoid being overwhelmed (or completely collapsing) and volume congestion riddling networks nationwide, shippers had to swallow a bitter pill: meeting consumer expectations for next-day or two-day service wasn’t happening. Shippers with contingency plans in place going into the holidays fared best as elections and vaccine distributions claimed an extraordinary amount of parcel and mail shipping capacity during the fourth quarter of 2020.

As with any crisis, there are always lessons to be learned. If 2020 taught shippers anything, it’s that it pays to listen to your small parcel carriers. Pay attention to their market moves and announcements. Then factor those insights into your overall transportation planning. We saw a similar uptick in awareness levels in 1997, when a 13-day UPS employee strike crippled the nation’s parcel network.

Fast-forward 23 years and COVID-19 had a similar impact – albeit more sweeping and longer in duration – on an industry that now includes multiple parcel carrier options. This time around, we saw that companies capable of distributing their shipping volume across FedEx, UPS, DHL, the USPS, and other providers (versus relying on just one) fared best during the 2020 holiday season.

Moving forward, smart shippers will continue to integrate flexible tactics into their supply chain planning, knowing that a “squeeze” on one end of that value chain will equate to a diversion at the other end of that sequence. This is where regional carriers and last-mile delivery services are helping to pick up the slack and, as a result, are now being taken more seriously than ever before. We expect this trend to continue in 2021 as companies shore up their transportation plans and work to avoid the challenges of 2020.

Small Parcel Rates: Network Visibility is the Key

Even with the vaccine distribution, COVID, and other outside forces impacting the small parcel landscape right now, we do expect a competitive, more rational, parcel shipping landscape to emerge later this year.

Small Parcel Rate Guide - Insight Fusion

We could see a retreat in surcharges and other extra fees, but only when volume begins to wane and the environment starts to normalize. We also expect more competitors to enter the parcel marketplace and grab some of the opportunities that the larger carriers are overlooking right now. As this takes place, shippers should get some benefit from the heightened competition.

Regardless of the current small parcel shipping environment and the challenges that it’s inflicting on shippers and end customers, supply chain visibility continues to rise to the top as the ultimate combat tool. In an environment where next-day and two-day deliveries are the norm – and where these options are getting more expensive – the company that understands its total shipping costs is the one that will be best equipped to offset the “perfect storm” of capacity constraints, rising rates, and surcharges.

A critical tool for any market conditions, supply chain visibility includes all aspects of your transportation network—from the time the goods leave the loading dock until they reach their final destination, and all points in between. “The COVID-19 pandemic has moved supply chain and logistics technologies to the public eye like few times before,” Crunchbase states, “as shortages at grocery stores and the distribution of a possible vaccine highlight the importance of moving goods and essentials.”

End-to-end supply chain visibility also helps companies pinpoint areas of concern (i.e., is fulfillment causing the delay?), and address them quickly. It also gives shippers accurate insights into carrier performance and enables good decision-making on that front. Transportation Insight, for example, breaks down the data by geographic region and individual carrier to come up with the best possible options for shippers.

In other words, we’re not just throwing small parcel rates and other information over the fence to our customers. We take a highly consultative approach that helps companies shape successful supply chain strategies in any market conditions. As we move further into 2021, expect new parcel shipping opportunities and challenges to emerge. Those companies that align themselves with a knowledgeable, tech-enabled logistics partner will be best positioned to leverage these opportunities and circumvent the challenges.

Tap into our team’s insight to support your freight and parcel management practices. Download our Q1 ChainLink 2021 for multi-modal trend forecasts and cost impact analysis. Read it today  for supply chain strategy guidance, as well as the latest changes in small parcel rates and other transportation modes.

For more detail, listen to our SME Roundtable discuss transportation trends in our latest digital event.

Strategic Supply Chain Planning 2021 | Beyond COVID

Posted on | by John Richardson

Companies are looking at diversifying their supply sources. Whether this means on-shoring, near-shoring or simply adding alternative regions to the existing base. This is not a quick proposition. Suppliers have to be located, certified and tested. Order patterns have to be established and inventory policies implemented. All of this takes data, analysts and time. Perhaps the most difficult part, managing change in your supply chain planning.

Whether you are a manufacturer, distributor or retailer you have to be able to support more direct consumer channels than you may have traditionally. This will involve better collaboration, inventory management and alternative fulfillment and transportation options. Again, this requires data, analysts and change management.

The companies that will lead the pack are the ones that recognize the permanency of the COVID changes on the horizon and establish long-term supply chain strategies to mitigate risk and guarantee products and service to the end customer.

Planning for Supply Chain Flex is Paramount

An exponential boom in e-commerce sales rapidly created significant congestion for last mile deliveries. The effect spilled across the entire supply chain. At distribution and fulfillment centers some shippers saw their small packages go unshipped due to volume caps implemented by parcel carriers. Elsewhere, LTL carriers facing heightened shipment volumes at their terminals delivered fluctuating service levels.

As a result, many companies examined how they complete final deliveries to their clients, a process that retail giants like Amazon have nearly mastered. More and more companies are shifting toward expedited service from either existing brick-and-mortar facilities or an adjusted network of distribution centers. Smaller, urban fulfillment centers added in certain areas can help skirt site-specific volume limits. More options make you less susceptible to geography-based capacity constraints.

But you must understand how those changes in network design affect cost and service performance. 

Through its ability to evolve a massive local network, Amazon proved to be among the most reliable carriers during the disruptions of 2020. Not everyone has the deep pockets to establish an Amazon-like network with large distribution centers and cross-dock strategies. 

However, you can determine where you can compete with that sprawling service network – and where you cannot. SKU rationalization, margin analysis of different channels and overall network design analysis can help businesses of any size understand where growth is occurring and where it is not. From there you can align your supply chain planning based on the demand patterns your business is experiencing.

Look Upstream to Determine Opportunity

With everything happening in the supply chain environment, it is important to get outside of your business and examine your network upstream to your suppliers. This provides insight in several important areas. 

Over the past 20 years companies have worked to reduce and remove inventory where possible, achieving the absolute least cost in the process. Today, you must balance inventory, determine which inventory is right, and even decide the right customers to serve. Understanding your processes, as well as those of your partners is integral to transportation cost management.

When your retail partner asks you to drop ship product to their customers, can you segment your inventory into the different physical channels to both serve those individual orders and continue filling regular store-level inventory needs?

How should your inventory model change as you move toward insourcing or reshoring? With longer lead times and growing landed costs emerging from foreign vendors, local suppliers allow you to manage a smaller inventory or direct ship to customers and, ultimately lower overall cost. Do you have the contingencies in place across your network of vendor partners to deploy local or regional sourcing in the event of ongoing disruption in Asia?

By stepping outside your own walls and understanding processes upstream and downstream – as well as their alternatives – you become a stronger partner, especially if you can offer your suppliers visibility into your own demand. Ultimately, that level of collaboration helps your partners plan better, improving efficiency and service to you in the process.

By helping customers understand their total value stream and deploying a lean-minded supply chain strategy consultation, we help them visualize how changes to their network can improve cost and service across their transportation environment.

Capacity for Change can Limit Improvement

Achieving flexibility in your supply chain requires both an ability to recognize when processes are not performing and a willingness to apply change. If you don’t change, nothing changes, and it became especially clear in 2020 that a lot of companies don’t know how to implement that change. 

Leadership has to want to change and improve, and it is important to understand that if you are not constantly problem-solving then you are going backwards. Smaller companies understand this especially well, but larger companies are often separated into silos and metrics conflict with day-to-day activity.

Are you willing to let your partners save you from yourself? If leadership is not willing to accept analysis and insight that supports change, then activity rarely changes until crisis occurs. And when that crisis occurs, without analysis to support process improvement, you may not be able to determine the right practices to change.

Performing that analysis is no easy task. A lot of smaller companies don’t have the skillsets or capacity to complete that data-driven look. Likewise, medium and large companies may dedicate people to monitor performance in different supply chain areas. They may not have the groups of people capable of not only understanding how to complete the analysis, but also problem solve. 

That is where Transportation Insight helps. We not only have the capacity to complete analysis of SKU-level performance, network design and alternative, contingency supply chain strategies. Importantly, we also teach your teams how problem solve, a skill that you can then pass along to others in the organization.   

Once we deploy a problem-solving mindset alongside analysis of your supply chain data, we can create a map of the transportation activities across your network and determine options for alleviating problem points that drive up your cost. By pairing those continuous improvement efforts with renewed network flexibility that eliminates the risk of disruption, Transportation Insight positions you for improved cost control and enhanced opportunities for growth. 

For more insight that will help support your supply chain strategy in 2021, download our latest industry forecast. Read the First Quarter ChainLink 2021 for a multi-modal look at the transportation trends that will affect your business in the year ahead.

Fulfillment Strategies: Is Your 2021 E-Commerce Plan in Place?

Fulfillment Strategies: Is Your 2021 E-Commerce Plan in Place?

Posted on | by Tyler Walton

This is important for many reasons, not the least of which is the big uptick in e-commerce that’s occurring in 2020, and that will likely continue well into 2021. Already increasing year-over-year, U.S. e-commerce sales were up 43% in September 2020, having grown by 42% the prior month. This growth impacted manufacturers, distributors, and retailers, many of which were unprepared for the onslaught. 

If you spent most of 2020 just trying to get through the pandemic, it’s time to dust off your supply chain, logistics and transportation plans and make sure your fulfillment strategies align with your 2021 e-commerce goals.

Changing Business Models 

As a whole, the pandemic was a wakeup call for these companies that were forced to question some of their fundamental assumptions. 2021 could bring an entirely new set of supply chain, logistics, and transportation challenges with it. 

“As many executives heave a sigh of relief, they are also preparing for a dramatically different environment in 2021,” Industry Week points out. 

“Recent economic challenges have forced manufacturers to change their business models, seemingly overnight, to stay competitive and prepare for not just recovery, but unprecedented growth,” it continues. “However, it may be difficult for manufacturers to keep up with both a snap-back in demand and a huge appetite from customers for innovative products and solutions.”

Navigating the New Fulfillment Normal

Under normal circumstances, companies can add labor and shifts to make up for throughput problems in their warehouses and DCs. With social distancing guidelines in place and the need to keep employees healthy a huge issue for companies right now, simply throwing labor at the problem doesn’t work anymore. 

These realities directly impact customer service which, in turn, affects margins and revenues. When customers feel like they’re being kept in the dark or that they’re not in control of the ordering and shipping process, they’ll take their business elsewhere. 

Here are six more strategies that all companies should include in their 2021 plans: 

  • Get your parcel shipping act together. In a world where nearly all customers expect their goods in three days or less, and where 30 percent of them expect them next day, you can’t reduce shipping costs at your customers’ expense. With this emphasis on delivery expectations, companies have to create parcel strategies that acknowledge the fact that shipping is the highest cost component of any e-commerce order.   
  • Watch your accessorials and peak surcharges. With the parcel carriers continuing to roll out increasingly-complex pricing strategies and inflating rates due to the lack of competition, shippers also have to keep a close eye on accessorials and peak surcharges at the package level. Understand how it’s impacting your costs and how to adjust and adapt moving forward into 2021. If SKU-level profitability is an important KPI, for example, then add that to list of metrics to measure. 
  • Consider a multi-carrier solution. There’s a lot of good value to be had by working with regional carriers and freight consolidators. Varying your approach also helps support customers’ delivery expectations. Amazon, for example, has worked hard to ensure high levels of visibility that starts when an order is placed and that doesn’t end until the package is on the buyer’s doorstep. With more of these customers having same-day and next-day delivery expectations, the multi-carrier approach can help support your overall fulfillment strategy and even make it more affordable. 

  • Rethink your fulfillment approach. To meet your customers’ fulfillment needs, you can either offer a higher shipper service level or you can change how your product is fulfilled and positioned (i.e., either with a bicoastal or multiple fulfillment level location plan). Whether you’re fulfilling it yourself, using a third-party logistics provider (3PL), or a hybrid approach, the key is to look to 2021 and beyond when setting up these networks. 
  • Use advanced technology tools. To get a head start on 2021, companies can tap into the tools that help automate, personalize, and engage virtual transactions, and that fuel their e-fulfillment engines. Cart integration, for example, automatically answers buyer questions like: How much is it going to cost? What are my shipping options? And, is there an opportunity for me to pick it up in-store? Through that integration and automation, the customer gets the choice and the control that they’re looking for today.
  • Focus on more than just the sales process. Companies should also consider post-purchase experience and post-purchase engagement tools, both of which automate the customer buying journey. These data-centric tools also lighten the workload for your customer service team. Finally, having shipping analytics right down to the individual order level puts the power of business intelligence (BI) into the shipper’s hands, and allows it to make good decisions based on accurate, relevant information (versus just guesswork).  

While it’s easy to get mired in the complications of 2020 right now, you’ll be much better prepared if you break the mold and start planning for the future today. That way, you’ll be in the right position and ready to pivot—in whichever direction is necessary—when 2021 comes. 

UPS Announces Last Day to Ship

Posted on | by Charles Moore

A later-than-usual Thanksgiving on Nov. 26 condenses the shipping season by almost a week. Meanwhile, continuing effects of COVID-19 drive more buyers online to fill holiday wish lists – and many of them will avoid the personal contact of store shopping altogether.

Combined, these factors predict a capacity crunch for the small package networks. Already experiencing service delays and disruptions, these networks will not see relief until after the New Year, even as parcel carriers bring on thousands of new workers.

Be mindful of the “last shipping days” announced by UPS and FedEx, but that may not be enough to avoid a disappointed holiday customer in 2021. That’s why the world’s largest retailers are turning the holiday shopping clock from Black Friday toward a “Black October.”

Navigating this year’s peak season during the middle of a pandemic will require companies to be more creative and flexible. Forward-thinking shippers should be prepared to adjust. 

Retailers Drive Christmas Creep, Protect Experience

Amazon’s Prime Days on Oct. 13-14 delivered $3.5 billion in sales to small- and mid-sized businesses, with a 60 percent uptick in sales over last year. The move expedites holiday shopping – and product shipping. It also adheres to latest guidance from UPS: “encourage your customers to shop earlier than ever with special offers or other incentives.” FedEx echoes the same advice for shippers preparing for the 2021 holiday season.

Promotions like Walmart’s “Big Save Days” and Target’s “Deal Days” are all designed to pull parcel volume forward and avoid a costly catastrophe caused by a lack of capacity in December. 

If your organization is focused on protecting customer experience this holiday season, keep these five things in mind: 

  1. It is more important than ever to make sure that you proactively and clearly communicate the potential for delays. Every year the national carriers suspend their on-time guarantees during the holiday period. Earlier this year they suspended the guarantees due to COVID-19 complications and disruptions.
  2. Retailers can ship-to-stores for curbside pickup.
  3. Retailers can also ship-from-stores to shorten the distance that the package travels in the carrier’s networks and thereby reduce the potential for delay.
  4. Shipments can be made to alternative delivery locations such as certain retail partners, your customer’s office, or to one of the many parcel lockers.


5. Finally, if you operate multiple DCs across the US, it will be important to have the right inventory at the right locations to speed delivery and avoid split orders.

In a time where lockdowns have driven e-commerce shipments to levels never seen before, companies will need to deploy an all-of-the-above strategy to navigate it appropriately.

Know the Last Days to Ship

Now more than ever, it is important to make every possible effort to avoid deadline shipments. If you anticipate a last-minute holiday rush, make sure your UPS shipments go out on or before these dates to give your parcel the best possible chance to arrive by Dec. 24:

  • UPS Ground: As early as Tuesday, December 15* 
  • UPS 3 Day Select®: Monday, December 21 
  • UPS 2nd Day Air®: Tuesday, December  22 
  • UPS Next Day Air®: Wednesday, December 23

*Note UPS advises that most UPS Ground shipments have a later “last recommended shipping dates.” Shippers can track their transit time and cost here. 

FedEx released its holiday schedule ahead of UPS, and both schedules align closely. We detailed 7 tips for holiday delivery success shortly after the FedEx announcement. 

Regardless of the service provider you trust with your shipments, through full transparency and good information, you can effectively manage customer expectations while also syncing with the carriers that will deliver the goods to their doorsteps.  

You Shipped it – Did it Make Money?

Protecting customer experience this holiday season will require timely shipments and thorough communications throughout the sales cycle. 

Protecting your organization’s profit while responding to these customer expectations requires additional awareness and proactive measures.

  • Be aware of the Peak Season Surcharges and more importantly the differences for UPS, FedEx, Regional carriers and now the USPS.
  • Perform a detailed analysis to estimate the surcharges financial impact and to mitigate any negative effects on profitability.
  • Identify specific SKUs that will be negatively impacted and make decisions regarding those items to protect profit margins.  
  • Raise the cost of the item.
  • Increase the free shipping threshold.
  • Pass some or all of the additional cost to the customer.
  • Ensure carriers agreements are best in class and that invoices are audited for compliance to them.
  • Make sure you have the right box sizes so that the packaging is only la
    rge enough to adequately protect items during transit.
  • Work to eliminate operational errors that create avoidable costs such as incorrect addresses, unnecessary declared value and unauthorized packages.

To help shippers protect profit on every customer and every order, we created “You Shipped it … But Did You Make any Money.” Open it today for more guidance on making sure your peak season ends in the black.

E-commerce Supply Chain 2020: Digital Deck the Halls

Posted on | by John Richardson

The challenges this year will be as long a family’s shopping list:

  • The traditional holiday peak converges with elevated online demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic. E-commerce sales will match or surpass brick-and-mortar. Consumers have multiple ordering channels to tap. E-commerce supply chain fulfillment and delivery operations need to respond to this decentralized − and unprecedented − demand-pull.
  • Many supply chains remain out of kilter, one of the pandemic’s many legacies. U.S. inventories are at their lowest levels in five years, according to several analysts. Stock-outs have been common throughout most of 2020. U.S. imports are spiking. However, those goods may not reach store shelves or distribution centers in time to satisfy peak consumption needs.

  • Parcel networks have been overwhelmed by demand since March. This has led to inconsistent delivery performance across the board. National and regional parcel carriers have maxed out their fulfillment and distribution infrastructures. Late deliveries mean that consumers will be forced to accept holiday service levels that are beneath their expectations. If there is good news, it’s that e-commerce consumers are aware of the problems and will be more tolerant of slower delivery. What they demand, and should expect, is access to real-time information about any service issues.
  • Consumers may order goods earlier than usual, allowing the supply chain to spread out delivery timetables to create a “load-leveling” effect. That would be positive news, but it should not automatically be counted upon. Amazon’s shift of its “Prime Day” program from July to mid-October could pull forward a fair amount of holiday activity.

  • Warehouse space is severely constrained. Amazon said several months ago it will need 50 percent more space to keep up with its projected holiday demand. Retailers with brick-and-mortar exposure need to position stores as “forward fulfillment” nodes. This allows orders to be pulled from store inventory and delivered over relatively short distances. Store networks will also support what is expected to be major demand spikes for in-store and curbside pickups of online orders. Pure-play e-tailers without store networks will need to get creative.
  • FedEx and UPS are levying meaningful peak surcharges on volumes from their largest customers. The U.S. Postal Service imposed the first peak surcharge in its history. Carriers say the fees are needed to offset their higher costs to serve. That is true, up to a point. Demands on delivery networks will be unprecedented, and carriers are pricing their services accordingly. Companies will have to consider this in their free shipping strategies to maintain profitability.

THE CLOCK IS TICKING

Is it too late for shippers and retailers to get their holiday house in order?

Not necessarily, but it will take fast action and deep planning. The challenges, as we’ve laid out, are immense. One key is to get ahead of the “demand curve.” When shippers gain visibility into end demand, they can prepare and execute a plan that enhances customer satisfaction and does so profitably. After all, meeting customer demands while losing money in the process is the hollowest of victories.

Managing the upstream channel is just as critical. Calibrating inventory flows with replenishment needs is a year-round challenge, and especially so during peak. The challenge is magnified this year with the headwind of COVID-19. Retailers need a clear line of sight into supplier production so they can forecast their inventory replenishment. In normal times, lack of visibility can lead to costly over-ordering to ensure adequate buffer stock. This season, however, over-ordering may be an adequate response, given how and where the inventory is positioned. 

During CSCMP’s EDGE 2020 Virtual Conference, Target Executive Vice President and Chief Supply Chain and Logistics Officer Arthur Valdez advised to “not be afraid to overreact.” That may sound counter-intuitive, but it can be an appropriate step during this peak. Target will be investing heavily in transportation services with a focus on improving delivery timing, Valdez said. Again, that appears to run against the grain as transport is considered a cost center. Yet it will be less costly than failing to execute deliveries because capacity is not available. A seasoned logistics partner can map out a strategy to leverage a customer’s existing assets, as well as to bring in outside capabilities that profitably meets customer demands.

This is especially important as shippers encounter an increasingly complex surcharge environment constructed by FedEx, UPS and, to a smaller degree, USPS and regional carriers.  High-volume FedEx and UPS customers could be looking at surcharges as high as $4 to $5 per piece. These are by far the most expensive surcharges we have ever seen. They can spell the difference between peak season success and failure, even if everything else breaks right. Any shipper expecting to tender significant traffic to either or both must be able to navigate those surcharges all within the framework of their logistics execution.

Amid the coming storm, it may be hard for folks to get a good fix on demand profiles beyond the holidays. But it pays to do so. For example, we may see another e-commerce surge early next year as fears of a combined COVID-seasonal flu cycle keep more consumers homebound. Already, we are seeing 2021 budget plans being adjusted to account for the lingering effect of COVID-19. We also expect similar peak season patterns for the next 3-5 years even after a coronavirus vaccine is approved and distributed. A strong logistics partner not only can help you get through 2020. It can prepare you for 2021, 2022, and beyond.

Last Days to Ship? 7 Tips to Meet Holiday Deadlines

Posted on | by Charles Moore

According to MarketWatch, Deloitte is forecasting a 1% to 1.5% year-over-year sales increase for the upcoming holiday season, during which time total retail sales will be about $1.15 billion (between November 2020 and January 2021). Meeting holiday shipping deadlines will be more important than ever.

“E-commerce sales, which have been strong throughout the coronavirus pandemic, are expected to climb 25% to 35%, reaching $182 billion and $196 billion,” Deloitte predicts. “Regardless of the scenario, however, consumers’ focus on health, financial concerns, and safety will result in a shift in the way they spend their holiday budget.”  

Here are seven tips for making sure your holiday packages get to their destinations on time.

7 Tips for Holiday Delivery Success 

The new realities of the current shipping environment have created ongoing service delays and disruptions, both of which have compounded into an overall capacity crunch for small parcel carriers. Working through this issue will require forward-thinking companies to adjust accordingly.

For example, shippers will need to be more creative and flexible to cope with the combination of COVID and the normal peak season. FedEx, UPS, and other carriers are hiring a lot more workers for the season, but we still expect to see some capacity issues. With the uncertainty, it will be more important than ever to inform customers when to expect shipments and be extremely transparent. 

Here are seven tips that will help you get your packages to their destinations on time: 

  1. Know the cutoff dates. FedEx’s last days to ship calendar is online here and UPS publishes its holiday deadlines here. The USPS plans to release its cutoff dates for holiday shipping sometime in October. Be sure to factor in these last days to ship dates when planning your holiday shipments. 
  2. Talk to your carriers. Proactively communicate with carriers regarding any expected increase in volume and any additional equipment requirements (e.g., feeders or bulk-type pickups). This will help your carriers plan ahead and provide some assurance that there will be capacity to accommodate your volume spikes (or, allow you to make alternative arrangements). 
  3. Next, talk to your customers. Companies should proactively communicate anticipated delays and properly set customer’s expectations on their websites and in any email communications. This could be as simple as featuring the holiday cutoff shipment dates prominently on the first page of your website. 
  4. Know the limits. Shippers should clearly understand any potential volume limits or caps that may be put in place by the carriers. Because these constraints can impact your ability to deliver on time, be sure to discuss them with your carrier. 
  5. Explore your options. Shippers should also understand their carrier options and negotiate favorable agreement terms to properly leverage all national, regional, and postal carriers. Having a “Plan B” in place is always a good idea during the busiest times of the year. 

  1. Start your product promos early. Don’t wait until the last minute to kick off your holiday promotions. Starting early will help you pull volume forward to avoid peak shipping periods and allow time for expected delays. 
  2. Factor in holiday business schedules. For example, USPS is closed for all of the major federal holidays. With delivery times varying between its services, knowing the cutoff dates and hours of operation are both important. 

Maintaining Transparency  

Reflecting on how parcel carriers performed for the 2019-20 holiday shipping season, UPS’ SurePost and FedEx’s SmartPost both assured 100% delivery for holiday orders that were shipped on or before December 14 or 9 (respectively). However, we also saw that as the cutoff date approached, those commitments slipped. This is something to keep in mind as you lay out your plans for the 2020-21 season. 

Using the tips outlined in this article, you can strike a nice balance between growing your company’s holiday sales while also letting customers know that there is a risk of passing the carrier’s “suggested date” for accepting pickup for a Christmas delivery. Through full transparency and good information, you can effectively manage customer expectations while also syncing with the carriers that will deliver the goods to their doorsteps.  

Peak Season Performance Requires Visibility

To make sure holiday shippers are aware of the latest trends affecting their transportation cost management, we convened a roundtable of our parcel experts. Watch or listen to our webinar “Peak Season: Are You Ready?” to hear Todd Benge, Robyn Meyer, Toni Caputo, Bernie Reeb and myself address the unprecedented challenges emerging his year.

This digital event shares strategies to help you protect profit and enhance customer experience. Watch it today to make sure you are getting charged correctly and manage the capacity risks that threaten to derail your performance.

6 Qualities to Look for in an E-Commerce Logistics Partner

Posted on | by Robyn Meyer

With changing customer demands, new carrier surcharges, COVID, and other challenges taking a bite out of shippers’ bottom lines right now, those companies are best served by logistics partners that bring a high level of value to the table. Even better, they do this while helping shippers overcome their key pain points and achieve their organizational goals.

If your e-commerce logistics provider isn’t living up to expectations in these six areas, it may be time to find one that will.

  1. Technology Systems that Mirror the Carriers’ Own Systems
    This allows the provider to estimate cost impact and predictive modeling to the penny. Every time the carriers make a change, that change should also be made in your provider’s system.
  2. A Strong Team of Subject Matter Experts
    That team should include engineers and analysts that know how to leverage the carriers’ profitability areas to gain better advantages for you (versus what a traditional account rep can manage). Our experts regularly share their insight with the marketplace.

  1. Ongoing Analysis and Strategic “Thinkery”
    Look for a partner that thinks well beyond the “one and done” approach. Today’s business environment requires a partner that focuses on continued delivery optimization and cost mitigation.
  2. A Proactive Auditing Function
    Rather than relying on a reactive mindset (e.g., asking for the same refunds over and over again), your provider should be working with an “identify and repair” mindset to eliminate these potential issues and mitigate ongoing costs.
  3. Advanced Analytics and KPI Tracking
    As e-commerce continues to grow, you need a partner that is constantly innovating and adding functionalities like margin management, SKU-level profitability, KPI tracking, order performance management and high levels of supply chain visibility.   
  4. A Problem-solving Mindset
    When new accessorials or surcharges are released, your logistics provider should be measuring the impacts of those changes on your budget and helping you mitigate those impacts.

Master Your E-Commerce Supply Chain

Possessing these key qualities, we bring our client partners ongoing value as they race to meet demands for delivery speed, service and choice. Supporting your efforts to enhance customer experience, we also implement strategies to control costs so that you can maintain awareness of how each and every product and customer is performing. 

Our Parcel Experts created “You Shipped It, but … Did it Make Money?” to identify some of the emerging challenges that jeopardize your profit. It highlights our approach in the marketplace and gives you a glimpse into the level of analysis that we bring our customers. 

Let’s take a deeper look at the supply chain challenges you are experiencing. Reach out to our supply chain masters today to begin a conversation about your personalized solution.

4 Tips: Improve Profitability Despite Rising Transportation Costs

Posted on | by Todd Benge

Profitable shipping is a very attainable goal, even in today’s uncertain environment, where FedEx and UPS peak carrier surcharges have become a moving target for all parcel shippers. Despite these rising costs, there are ways all companies can improve shipping profitability in 2020. 

Try using these four tried-and-true tactics for improving shipping profitability in any market conditions. 

  1. Think at a Package Level
    If you’re handling multiple pick-and-pack orders, you need to know what you’re putting into different sized packages. Align that information with the actual transportation costs, and then figure out the profitability level on each. 

    This can be a complex process, but ultimately it is important to understand that the dollar amount on your transportation invoice does not tie into your product profitability. Once you determine what it costs to ship each SKU, it becomes clear that offering free shipping at a $50 order threshold, for instance, may not yield a profitable order for your company. 
  2. Use Good Margin Management
    When your marketing department launches a promotion – “Buy $50 worth of stuff and get free shipping” – make sure the “losers” do not fill-up e-commerce shopping cart and drive your cost above profit. To avoid these problems, share relevant information across your organization to keep everyone marching in the same direction. 

  1. Leverage Data 
    Look not only at carrier data, but also sales data, product costs, fulfillment costs, and other metrics that go into a single order. Transportation Insight helps shippers accumulate all of that information and consolidate it into a unified dashboard that is used to track trends, pinpoint winning/losing SKUs, and single out other areas where the company may be losing money.

  1. Partner with a Transportation Expert
    Work with a reliable logistics provider that has built out the necessary systems and that spreads the value of those systems across numerous different users. The latter allows providers to leverage economies of scale and offer their services at an affordable cost. This translates into high value for shippers in any business or economic condition. 

Protect Profit for Every Customer and Every Order

Our latest strategy guide “You Shipped It, But … Did it Make Money?” raises a question that is on the minds of many business leaders. 

Your business has responded to significant shifts in consumer buying behaviors and your customers expectations are being met. But did the transaction yield profit for the business? Or did transportation cost complexity eclipse your margin in the rush to serve?

Open our guide on margin management for more strategies that will help you master your supply chain to protect profit for every order.

You Ramped Up E-Commerce Shipping for COVID…Now What?

Posted on | by Todd Benge

The effort didn’t go unnoticed. 

Comparing year-over-year e-commerce sales, DigitalCommerce360 says volume was up 76% in June. And while that increase leveled off at 55% for July 2020, e-commerce sales are still up 55% year-over-year for the first seven months of the year. 

Retailers are driving much of that growth as many completely changed their distribution models (either permanently or temporarily) away from brick-and-mortar and over to alternative online fulfillment strategies. Already underway pre-pandemic, the movement to sell more online accelerated rapidly once B2B and B2C customers started placing more orders from their laptops and mobile devices. 

Reacting quickly to an event that hit fast, hard and unexpectedly, companies made e-commerce shipping decisions based on a desperate need to stay in business. As a result, those decisions do not always include a complete analysis of the true cost of shipping those goods to customers. As added costs emerge, including peak parcel surcharges from UPS and FedEx, the true cost picture becomes blurry. 

It’s time for a thorough assessment of exactly what your COVID-related e-commerce strategy is costing your company.

Take a Step Back, Assess E-Commerce Costs

As you continue to hone your business model to accommodate e-commerce growth and changing customer demands, it is time to take a step back and truly assess the costs associated with these models. 

Many of these companies will continue handling more e-commerce volume than they did pre-COVID (even with their physical stores opening again). Managing both sides of the equation profitably requires a thorough investigation of the true cost of shipping and a strategy that factors in customers’ needs with organizational profitability. 

Companies should also weed out their “losing” SKUs, assess shipping costs right down to the package level, practice good margin management across the entire organization, utilize data for good decision-making, and work with a reputable logistics partner. 

Master E-Commerce Shipping, Master Order Profitability

Continue shipping products without closely examining the time, effort and money that goes into sending out each package and you will soon find yourself underwater. As pandemic pushed e-commerce sales and residential orders to new heights, was your organization among those that raced into reactive mode?

Do you know the true cost of your e-commerce shipping decisions? You can not afford to ignore this problem.

To help you master your response to online demand, our Supply Chain Masters created “You Shipped It, but … Did It Make Money?” Read today and access strategies to protect profitability for every order and every customer.

Don’t Let Peak Surcharges Kill Your E-Commerce Profit

Posted on | by Todd Benge

Shippers often don’t expect accessorial changes and peak season surcharges that carriers introduce at different times throughout the year. In most cases, seasonal demand swings and business peaks drive these cost changes. 

This year a global pandemic prompted peak season surcharges. Because these new costs coincided with skyrocketing demand for online shopping, many shippers lacked the visibility required to protect e-commerce profit on every shipment.

An Aug. 7 communication from UPS confirmed that more peak surcharges are coming for the holiday season. 

Here are three ways to keep these surcharges from killing your company’s profitability. They’ll become increasingly important as peak season surcharges could become a new year-round norm.

  1. Carefully Audit Every Carrier Invoice
    Go beyond examining the invoice number and dollar amount. Taking the position, “Okay, last week I shipped $75,000 worth of merchandise. That sounds about right,” isn’t a deep enough dive into your parcel invoices. 

    This high-level analysis doesn’t give you the insights you need to pivot effectively when surcharges are imposed. Get down to the actual package and charge level. This is one of the most important practices in managing peak season surcharges and protecting e-commerce profit.
  2. Share the Cost – Pass It or Promote It
    Don’t assume that these surcharges have to get tacked onto your “costs of doing business.”

    As long as it doesn’t affect your competitive position, pass the surcharge costs along to your customers. By strategically aligning products with marketing promotions, you can also increase order value, optimize shipment density and, ultimately, mitigate bottom-line impact of peak-season costs.

    If you do have to absorb the additional cost, be sure to factor that into the sale, versus waiting for your parcel carrier’s invoice to arrive and taking it right out of your profit for a specific order.   

  1. Team-up with E-Commerce Partners 
    Burdened by carrier surcharges and operating in a challenging business environment, shippers may be tempted to only deal with carriers when they have a gripe, a fee that needs to be refunded, or a surcharge that doesn’t apply (but was charged anyway). 

    These situations generally reach a positive resolution when shippers have win-win relationships with their carriers. This has been a practice for years in the truckload/less-than-truckload sector, where being a “shipper of choice” has become a popular stance for companies that are assessing their total costs of transportation.   

    The same applies in the parcel space, where we rely on accurate, up-to-date, supporting data when working with carriers on behalf of our customers (versus just managing issues in a one-off manner). 

    By serving as a link between shippers and carriers (who would otherwise be forced to work with thousands of different customers on an individual level), we are an extension of your parcel team. 

Master Your Parcel Program

To help you control costs in an ongoing peak season surcharge environment, we created “Manage the Surge: Avoid Surcharge Shocks, Power Performance.” It explores the how and why behind parcel carriers’ cost-recovery tactics. Read it today for the strategies you need to power a parcel program response that offsets these costs and protects your e-commerce profit.