Imagine running an online costume rental site. As much as you would like them to plan ahead, your customers frequently choose costumes at the last minute. For this year's holiday marketing campaign, you decide to advertise that every order placed by noon Wednesday will be delivered by Friday, in time for weekend parties. “Order by Wednesday, Get It By Friday!” Part of your plan involves using guaranteed two-day express delivery, but does this mean that every order that comes in by noon Wednesday has to be sent using an express service? Of course, you have to deliver to your customers in the time frame promised, but it’s possible you could be using carrier express services when ground service can achieve the same result. In fact, you could be spending as much a three times too much on unnecessary express service depending on where your package is being shipped.
Are there more important, time sensitive packages than costumes for Halloween? Medicines for hospitals and clinics, tax forms in April’s crunch time, contracts, financial forms, and legal documents are critical in their respective sectors. Many people look to the carriers’ express services as being the only option for faster delivery, but the likely reality is that they aren’t even looking at alternatives. The carriers are happy for the extra, more profitable express business, but how much carrier profit would you like your business to contribute?
The carriers’ delivery zones are easily accessed on the web. If you are willing to spend the extra time, you can use each carrier’s website to check transit times and delivery costs for each package, find the lowest rate for the service needed, and you are set. But that’s a lot of work for one package, especially since this extra work is not necessary! If multiple packages need to go out on the same day, it is likely you and your coworkers do not have the time to do this with everything else going on.
One secret is to leverage the two major parcel carriers’ guaranteed delivery commitments for ground services. The better shipping systems can absolutely help with this. Our CPS shipping software has a feature called Smart RateBots™ for shippers to take advantage of guaranteed delivery times. A Smart RateBot automatically chooses the best delivery service based on the required transit time and lowest cost. If you need it there in two days and ground service guarantees that, there is no need to pay for the more expensive two-day express service.
Let’s look at an example of how this feature can save a company money. I need to send a package from Dallas to New Orleans and it needs to be there in two days. Using the carrier websites shows that both major carriers guarantee delivery by ground service on the second day with one carrier’s price at $12.27 and the other’s at $11.03. Shipping using a two-day express service costs more than $30 to get the same package to the same place at the same time by either carrier. Also, what if I searched only one carrier website and found only the higher of the two costs? Even if I selected the ground service, I might have spent 10% more than necessary just because I didn’t check the other carrier’s website. Dallas to New Orleans is only one example—check out a zone table from your area and see what’s in range of two-day ground.
CPS Smart RateBots do all the above work in seconds, choosing the best service to use automatically. It takes longer to read the paragraph about the savings than it does to get them. To see a live video of Smart RateBots in action, click here.
It’s good to save money on shipping. It’s better to get those savings automatically every time you ship. Savings like this can really add up, and CPS shipping software more than pays for itself because of it. To find out more about Smart RateBots and CPS, the best multi-carrier shipping software, please visit us at www.HarveySoft.com.
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