There are many methods to helping to save money for your company, especially in reducing shipping costs that are very efficient and doable. However, one well over-looked area that could help many companies out is simply a few clicks away – online shipping tools that are many times free to use. These tools are available from numerous the carriers themselves to companies like Source Consulting, which provides a free shipping calculator and free shipping comparison tool.
The Importance of Optimizing Your Supply Chain with Risk Management
What is risk management? It is the process of looking at potential sources of disruption to your supply chain that can create financial and physical damage. The next step would involve the business and supply chain leaders evaluating the assessment and fix the weaker points and preemptively doing their best to prevent the risk from happening in the future. It may be impossible to prepare for every single disruption, but this practice allows for contingency plans and preparation for worst case scenarios. However, as common sense as the method may seem, many businesses still have not adopted these practices and optimize their supply chains.
Understanding Shipping Lingo to Reduce Shipping Costs
When you make shipments through either FedEx or UPS, when was the last time you thought about how much of the shipping costs you could actually be saving? In reality, one of the easiest ways to save money is to focus on reducing your shipping costs. We’ve gone over a variety of ways you can be saving your company money on shipping from parcel audits to instructions on how to write a shipping form, but another important way is to understand the language used by the carriers that can better help you talk to carrier representatives, especially during carrier negotiations.
Amazon’s Potential Effect on the Shipping Industry
The carrier system has for a long time been a very oligarchic system, only made up mainly of two carriers, UPS and FedEx. Because of these two carriers, the rules of the shipping industry have always been based on comparing these two carriers’ prices and agreements and can, for insightful businesses, create a method to reduce shipping costs overall. However, this very system could change in the near future according to a new Forbes article.
On the History of Logistics and Supply Chains
Although we should always be aiming at the future, what is equally as important is to understand our past history and progression of how a concept has evolved and the lessons we can learn of it. A historical outlook of supply chains and logistics, however, seems relatively difficult to pinpoint down to key moments. Luckily, Supply Chain and Observer created an intuitive and clean visual timeline infographic, which you can view below.
Integrating Transportation Software and Technology to Reducing Shipping Costs
Technological innovations grows at a quick rate with new announcements and progress happening nearly every single week. However, integrating new transportation software is difficult at times, especially in industries that have been in business for quite a while and more averse to changes. The shipping industry seems very straightforward and the technological innovations readily apparent; however, there is more than just an online tracking code and digital orders that can help you reduce your shipping costs.
The Effects of the USPS Losses
2012 has been a busy year for the shipping industry both in big news items. Such events as the 2012 shipping rate increase has already affected many businesses’ budget plans for the year while floods and earthquakes in 2011 has shaken up many companies to look deeper into their risk management programs to create a viable Plan B. An interesting piece of news that will only, most likely, grow bigger as the year continues is the United States Postal Service (USPS) budget crisis. USPS has been losing money for a long period of time from a $5.1 billion operator loss for the 2011 fiscal year and a $3.2 billion loss for the first quarter of 2012. They expect to default on retiree health benefits to the government this year and could hit their $15 billion debt ceiling by the end of the year.
Tags: Carrier Service Level
Helping Reduce Shipping with Your Help
Source Consulting is always striving to help businesses reduce their shipping costs. We accomplish this through both our guaranteed money-saving work and the innovative software to help businesses with their shipping. Our work includes freight auditing carrier invoices, which checks for carrier errors that populate nearly all invoices for guaranteed savings, and carrier rate analysis and negotiation solutions, which will have our experienced employees with prior carrier experience analyze your carrier agreements for the best discount opportunities. Additionally, our unique software, Halo and Intelliship, will help businesses make smart shipping choices and track all of them with a few clicks of the button. We want to continue to spread our money-saving services to more businesses with your referrals!
Reduce Shipping Costs with an Audit Trial
There are many ways to reduce shipping costs, but many companies are intimidated by the amount of work that they perceive to be necessary for such savings. However, one solution is very easy-to-find that these same companies may not be aware is right in front of them – their carrier invoice. Why? Nearly every carrier invoice sent to your company contains mistakes in the list of charges you receive. In turn, each of these errors should be refunded back to you. More importantly, these overcharges can equate to savings that could be quite more than just a little bit of change.
Tags: freight audit services
Why A Parcel Audit Can Help Your Company Reduce Shipping Costs
Reducing shipping costs has become an important point of discussion for many businesses with the recovering economic situation. However, although it may seem easy to accomplish at first, the actual practice is much tougher to implement as businesses must question whether they need to cut services or shipment options. The great news is that there are some tried-and-true practices to reducing the final balance on an invoice without having to necessarily cut back services to your customers, which should only be used when completely necessary. One of these options is to conduct a parcel audit, which can be an extremely helpful tool in your arsenal.