The Warehouse Rate Shopping Best Practice to Reduce Shipping Charges

This best practice we are going to discuss is called as rate shopping. The rate shopping can be done for both parcel and the (Less than Load) LTL. I mean the parcels are the small boxes that they ship mostly as Ecom orders. Sometimes they also ship retail orders as parcels from the distribution center to the final destination. In Ecom orders it will be a consumer that’s buying product, they place an order on the web or from their mobile device. 

In the LTL scenario it will be a wholesale B2B customer that you will be shipping order to, which can be done with rate shopping. If you want to ship your LTL order next day or second day with regular ground, based on that service level you can configure all the rates. You can get FedEx rates or FedEx as a partial service. You can get UPS Parcel Service rates, DHL parcel service rates and the USPS service rates. You can put it in the system with origin i.e the location of your facility and your destination based on this origin. Based on the destination, based on the number of boxes which happens typically after cartonization and the waving process. 

rate-shopping-best-practices

I mean we can even talk about the waving process. Eventually the cartons are created based on the number of items that need to be fit within these boxes and after choosing the best box, you can perform rate shopping for this box that is to be shipped from the origin to the destination. This can be spread across three or four parcel carriers for that service level. Let’s say that the customer chose the service level they need when they placed an order. 

They would want ground or next day or second day air shipping, so whatever it is based on that service level you can get the rates with FedEx, UPS, USPS and DHL. You can compare all that and then you can choose the least expensive option. For example, if you don’t see a big difference between FedEx and UPS but sometimes it adds up if you are shipping tens of thousands of boxes per shift that still adds up. That’s a big number even if you say $1 for one day and if you’re running for 200 days that adds up that’s a big number such as $10,000. 

So that’s something to think about and you can do the same thing in the LTL carrier side as well. Especially if you’re going to pay for the LTL and the customer is not paying for the transportation service you should figure out the LTL carrier which offers the best deal. You can still run rate shopping with the LTL carriers as well as similarly get the parcel carrier rates and then put it in the system and then you can run your cartonization and then palletization. Based on the number of cartons, based on the weight, based on the volume you can you can run rate shopping and then figure out what is the least expensive rate and you can take that carrier as the preferred carrier. 

So these are some things you do not want to think about, but these are more on the transportation side of the business. But still need to be considered while designing your WMS implementation. I am sure this is helpful, and thanks for taking the time to watch this video and share your comments in the section below.

Do subscribe to our YouTube Channel.  Originally published at Smartgladiator.com on August 6, 2019.
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Aug 2019
By Puga SankaraLeave a comment
Author:
Puga Sankara
About:
Puga Sankara is the Founder, CEO of Smart Gladiator LLC. Smart Gladiator designs, builds, and delivers market-leading mobile technology for retailers, distributors, and 3PL service providers. So far, Smart Gladiator LoadProof has been used to ship, receive, and scan more than 100 million boxes. SG LoadProof is a patent pending Centralized Enterprise Photo/Video Document System on Cloud for Supply Chain. SG LP is built on the fact that photos & videos are vital docs as important as POs/SOs/Legal Contracts/Fulfillment Orders that reside in ERP/WMS/TMS systems, that serve as compelling, conclusive, unequivocal proof of crucial, critical, vital operations executed in Supply Chain within/across orgs when fulfilling customer orders as well as meeting contractual obligations between orgs as merchandise is transferred between different parties that partake in Supply Chain functions & operations. And these photos/videos data should not be stored in someone’s Smartphone or Email Inbox or in their personal/work Computer, but should be stored in a Centralized Enterprise system, where such data can be pushed into super-fast, stored securely, accessible to all stake holders (CFO/Sales Reps/Customer Support/AR/AP) in an org, as well as facilitates super-fast retrieval/sharing. LP is an Enterprise System of record for Photo/Video docs & is as important as an ERP which is an enterprise system of record for POs, SOs, Legal Contracts between parties etc. that have huge legal ramifications, also as important as a WMS (Warehouse Management System) that hold indispensable shipment & fulfillment data on orders. Like how Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat etc. have evolved into social media platforms/systems that enable individuals to showcase their beauty/pretty clothes/lovely cosmetics/hep coolness etc., LoadProof is an Enterprise system that holds similar photos/videos, but for a different reason, not for show off, but to serve as compelling, conclusive, unequivocal & indisputable system of record and proof that can be presented even in the court of law, when there is a dispute between parties while they execute many facets of the Supply Chain functions & operations. SG LoadProof is also an Enterprise System of Record for Photos, videos and any other digital documents for your Supply Chain Network. A system of record (SOR) or source system of record (SSoR) is a data management term for an information storage system (commonly implemented on a computer system running a database management system) that is the authoritative data source for a given data element or piece of information. The need to identify systems of record can become acute in organizations where management information systems have been built by taking output data from multiple source systems, re-processing this data, and then re-presenting the result for new business use. In these cases, multiple information systems may disagree about the same piece of information. These disagreements may stem from semantic differences, differences in opinion, use of different sources, and differences in the timing of the extract, transform, and load processes that create the data they report against, or may simply be the result of bugs. The integrity and validity of any data set is open to question when there is no traceable connection to a good source, such as a known System of Record. Where the integrity of the data is vital, if there is an agreed system of record, the data element must either be linked to, or extracted directly from it. In other cases, the provenance and estimated data quality should be documented. The “system of record” approach is a good fit for environments where both: 1. there is a single authority over all data consumers, and 2. all consumers have similar needs Here, LoadProof is the System of Record for pictures and videos for all the entities in Supply chain who uses pictures and videos to track using any Supply Chain System infrastructure. 1. LoadProof provides accurate, thorough, complete, and latest information in pictures and videos related to any entity in the Supply chain that is tracked. 2. LoadProof is the single authority on pictures and videos related to any entity in the Supply Chain that is tracked 3. LoadProof doesn’t let any external system to copy the records being stored in it, which eliminates the data being duplicated in multiple places to preserve the data integrity and credibility. 4. LoadProof has a secured login procedure which lets only users with select level access to view the data and modify the records which helps in maintaining LoadProof is becoming the Industry Standard System for Photo & Video Docs for Supply Chain Smart Gladiator is located in ATDC - Advanced Tech Dev Center (tech Incubator) in Georgia Institute of Tech. Click for a demo - https://loadproof.com/apply Puga is a supply chain technology professional with more than 25 years of experience in deploying capabilities in the logistics and supply chain domain. His prior roles involved managing complicated mission-critical programs driving revenue numbers, rolling out a multitude of capabilities involving more than a dozen systems, and managing a team of 30 to 50 personnel across multiple disciplines and departments in large corporations such as Hewlett Packard. He has deployed WMS for more than 30 distribution centers in his role as a senior manager with Manhattan Associates. He has also performed process analysis walk-throughs for more than 50 distribution centers for WMS process design and performance analysis review, optimizing processes for better productivity and visibility through the supply chain. Size of these DCs varied from 150,000 to 1.2 million SQFT. Puga Sankara has an MBA from Georgia Tech. He can be reached at puga@smartgladiator.com or visit the company at www.smartgladiator.com. Also follow him at www.pugasankara.com. [Read More]
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