21 Requirements To Consider For A New Multi-Carrier Shipping & Manifesting System

By Brian Barry, F. Curtis Barry & Company Input and contribution by ProShip, Inc.

Parcel growth will continue to rise at a rate of 17%-28% each year between 2017 and 2021, and by 2020, same-day delivery will drive up logistics costs as a percentage of revenue by 50% (Source: Gartner, October 2017).

For most omnichannel businesses, the cost of shipping now exceeds the sum of all other fulfillment costs including direct and indirect payroll, benefits, facilities and utilities, packing supplies, etc. Businesses need every advantage they can get to hopefully evaluate, reduce or control the rate of shipping expense increases.

Earlier generations of shipping and manifesting systems didn’t have much functionality other than weighing packages and generating labels and manifests. But today’s shipping systems have great functionalities that some businesses have not explored in order to help with controlling current and future shipping costs.

New generation systems have rate shopping, the preparation of international documentation, track and trace, analysis of shipping data and enterprise-wide control from multi-locations including DCs, stores and suppliers. Many of these features were built with the customer experience in mind. The goal is to customize your abilities to best suit your customers.