Are You Still Shipping The Old Way?

Companies that sell products know how important, and time consuming, it can be to get products out the door. So when does it make sense to utilize shipping software in conjunction with your order entry program to make the process more efficient?

Even for companies that only ship a few packages at a time, the days of manually writing entries in the shipping log are long gone. Today, all of the major freight carriers allow you to create shipping documents and labels online. But that's only half the battle, isn't it?

You are still left with the data entry in both the freight system and order entry. Plus, what if you have other considerations like marking up freight or dealing with LTL (less-than-truckload) carriers that don't provide online shipping? When does it make sense to integrate the shipping function as part of your order processing solution?

To help answer that question, lets take a look at one company that faced the same questions and what they did to answer them.

As a distributor of specialty wood cabinets, this company currently ships anywhere from 70 to 300 boxes per day. However, their volume wasn't this high when they began using their Sage Software solution.

Using a combination of standard and LTL carriers, they originally created shipping labels manually, and where appropriate, created stencils for multi-package shipments. Even though they began to utilize the online capabilities of the standard carriers, they were still left with the duplicate data entry issue. Over time, it also became more difficult to repair and obtain the fluids needed for the stencil equipment.

After carefully identifying their needs, and soliciting advice from their freight carriers, they implemented freight shipping software that integrated directly within their Order Entry application. In doing so, they found the following benefits:

• Since the shipping documents are now created from the information already in the accounting database, errors from re-typing mistakes were virtually eliminated. Considering that correcting those errors cost them anywhere from $50-$100 per correction, these savings alone covered the cost of the application.


• They estimate that they are saving at least 2-3 minutes in processing each package and are now able to handle multiple times the numbers of packages, in less time, than they did when using their non-integrated method.


• Their solution allows them to automatically handle freight tier calculations and even markup the freight charges directly within Order Entry. Better yet, the information, including tracking, is available within Order Entry for everyone to access, streamlining customer service issues.

Probably most telling, is the attitude of the shipping department to the solution. While there was the normal anxiety in replacing a well established system, there is no way that they would consider going back to the previous method. In fact, during an unplanned network issue, they didn't stop grumbling about having to do things "the old way."

Obviously, every company has unique requirements in many areas and shipping certainly is one of them. However, if your company does ship packages as part of its daily operations, we're fairly confident that you may also benefit from utilizing an integrated freight solution.

Let us know. We'll be happy to discuss your situation and help your shipping department move on from "the old way."

PSE Business Solutions Inc., PO Box 322, Williamstown, NJ 08094  Phone:856-262-8502 Fax:856-262-8597                

"Sage Software, the Sage Software logos, and the Sage Software product and service names mentioned herein are registered trademarks or trademarks of Sage Software, Inc., or its affiliated entities. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners." Copyright © 2006 PSE Business Solutions, Inc. All rights Reserved