ProShip shipping experts breakdown your shipping software with a few simple questions

If there is one thing the pandemic made clear, it was that today’s supply chains have weaknesses that affect everyone from the C-suite down to the everyday shopper. Initially, many brands had knee-jerk reactions of adjusting in the short-term without concern for how this would affect the long-term. With a bit more stability now fueling their decision-making, brands are increasing supply chain investment to inject flexibility into their logistics program. In fact, 64% of respondents in the 2022 MHI Industry Report are focusing on supply chain investment and nearly 66% say they will spend upwards of $1 million over the next 2 years.

Shipping software health quiz

With so many brands looking to find the right solution to energize their supply chain and ensure it is thriving, the first step should be evaluating where your pain points exist. We’ve done some of the legwork for you and come up with a short multiple-choice test for gauging the healthiness of your shipping software.

Question 1: How streamlined is your shipping process?

• A. Totally manual and very time-consuming.

• B. Mostly manual and not time effective.

• C. Mostly automated but could use some improvements.

• D. Completely automated, we don’t have issues.

Questions 2: What kind of shipment visibility does your team have?

• A. No real-time visibility – we often must sift through multiple systems to find tracking information.

• B. We see some of the shipment information, but it takes a long time to find it and relay it to other members of our team.

• C. We see most of the shipment information, but it is disconnected from other parts of our tech stack.

• D. We have real-time visibility into our shipments and can see the tracking and tracing of shipments across different shipping services.

Question 3: Is your software able to scale as throughput changes, i.e., during peak season?

• A. No, we’ve outgrown our solution and have downtime with our system during our peak.

• B. Not really, we frequently have delays or lags in our software.

• C. It can most of the time – downtime and delays are sporadic.

• D. Yes, our shipping software has no downtime and no delays.

Questions 4: Can your shipping software be customized to your business?

• A. No, we must bring in (and pay for) an expert to update the code in our system if we want to make changes to specific shipping information or for certain customers.

• B. Not really, we have access to our code but no one on our team has the knowledge of how to update it.

• C. Yes, we have some custom business rules, but they don’t work together very well, and if we need to update them, it will turn into at least a couple months process.

• D. Yes, our custom business rules have automated several of our shipping processes and increased our efficiency. We can update these on our own as we need to.

Question 5: Can you perform automated rate shopping to optimize and source multiple shipping options with optimal service and pricing?

• A. No, it takes too much time to look up multiple rates. Our team just manually pulls the cheapest rate from one of the carriers we usually use.

• B. No, our team manually pulls a couple of the rates from our top carriers, and we pick the cheapest.

• C. Yes, we do some rate shopping with our current solution but only with a limited number of carrier and service options.

• D. Yes, we can rate shop to find the cheapest service that delivers by a certain date on the calendar – we can also include multiple factors that can affect this choice.

Question 6: Is it easy to maintain carrier compliance?

• A. No, a large chunk of our supply chain budget goes to chargebacks and surcharges.

• B. Not really, we struggle to manage extra accessorial charges and keep surcharges at bay.

• C. Yes somewhat – but we still have chargebacks and incorrect addresses occasionally.

• D. Yes, our software ensures that we maintain 100% carrier compliance.

Question 7: Do you struggle with slow processing times?

• A. Yes, we are constantly waiting for a label to print to move onto the next shipment, even during non-peak.

• B. Yes, our processing times are not great, and the problem only gets worse if we add more locations.

• C. Not really, we can get orders out the door, but it’s not surprising to have issues during peak season.

• D. No, we have millisecond transaction times and a system that can handle unlimited shipping requests from unlimited locations.

Question 8: Finally, are you confident in the lifetime development and support of your current software solution?

• A. No, we’ve received notice that our current version is sunsetting (or will be soon). We will need to upgrade to stay with this software vendor.

• B. Not really, we found out that certain features from our current software will only be available if we upgrade and that development on our version has ceased.

• C. Yes somewhat – we know that our software vendor still supports our solution but recent news has indicated they are shifting their business focus away from parcel.

• D. Yes, our current vendor is continuously updating our software solution and sharing what we can expect in the future as far as development, security, etc.

What your results say about your parcel shipping strategy

Now that you have your answers, let’s compile them to see what your next steps are…