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The Agile Supply Chain: How Business Rules Enable Rapid Response in Parcel Shipping 

Published Date
Author Justin Cramer, Co-Founder

Discover how algorithmic business rules are essential to parcel shipping resilience

It is early August 2024. Logistics personnel across the U.S. arrive at work expecting the usual challenges of a typical month, only to find out they are at risk of not having a way of getting their shipments into the USPS delivery stream. In other words, their packages might not get to their customers. An entire carrier option had been removed with only days of warning. Pitney Bowes sold its Global Ecommerce (GEC) division to Hilco Global for immediate wind-down via Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.


Aside from the impact on shipping costs, this was either an operational nightmare or as simple as implementing a business rule change for shippers using the right multi-carrier shipping software. You might ask, what made the difference between shippers that had a painful disruption involving their shipping software vendor and shippers that made a quick change, allowing the logistics personnel to refocus on managing the potential changes in cost?

  1. Carrier diversification
  2. Well-structured business rules

While there are many other articles and webinars on carrier diversification, this article will focus on the second item – well-structured business rules. Let’s take a closer look.

Business Rules in Parcel Shipping 

Back to that date in August… as many logistics personnel found out Pitney Bowes GCE was shutting down the day of service cutoff, there was not much time to spare. The ones with well-structured business rules were able to simply remove the carrier’s services from their Best Way Groups. They could also add additional carrier services to the same Best Way Group. End of story – they then were able to move on to their next problem, most likely cost controls.


Why was this so straightforward for them? Rather than creating prescriptive business rules – for example, “if a package weighs less than 1 pound, ship it with carrier service X” – they followed the advice of their multi-carrier shipping software vendor and leveraged algorithmic business rules instead. Prescriptive business rules like that are rigid, and if the shipper stops using that carrier or the service is no longer available, someone has to manually update the code. In contrast, algorithmic business rules allow the software to automatically select the most appropriate carrier service based on the shipment’s attributes, offering far more flexibility and scalability.

The Role of the Enterprise Software Stack in Parcel Shipping 

In the Enterprise Software Stack (ESS), software solutions consist of three parts:

  1. Product
  2. Configuration
  3. Business Rules

For any piece of software, the product consists of the hardcoded logic components that work together to provide the features.


For many software pieces, users or IT personnel have the ability to select which features are enabled and how they interact with one another through configuration.


For advanced pieces of software, there may also be a business rule layer. This business rule layer enables custom logic beyond the software's feature set. This often keeps the base software clean and lean, allowing it to do its core job quickly and efficiently. It also allows customers to deviate far from “best practice,” ensuring that their unique space in the market, and the deviations that make them unique from other companies selling a similar commodity, is expressed by their software stack, not just their marketing team.

Execution is the difference. 

Many companies have an ESS with business rule layers in the appropriate software, yet still operate as if their feet are stuck in cement. What makes nimble customers different? What allowed many logistics professionals to make minor attribute, value, and/or threshold changes to their multi-carrier shipping software (MCSS) and move on to the next issue, while others would spend days trying to get now overloaded vendors to make changes for them? The answer is simple: they had their vendors execute those business rules.


Many logistics personnel attempt to be prescriptive.


For all boxes less than one pound, use carrier Y with service X.


This is a prescriptive business rule. Changing it often requires vendors to modify the code for the business rule directly.


Logistics personnel who leverage algorithmically driven business rules enable the MCSS to address the day-to-day, minute-to-minute realities of shipping, allowing them to focus on larger, more strategic items.


For our premium customers, we offer the lowest-cost 2-day service through this Best Way Group of carrier services. For our standard customers, we utilize the lowest-cost 3-day service through this other Best Way Group of carrier services.


These are algorithmic business rules, which means all a logistics person would need to do to remove a carrier from consideration is to remove the carrier’s service from the Best Way Groups. In this case, neither the vendor nor IT personnel need to be involved at all. This means the logistics department can make changes to the operation of their MCSS as rapidly as needed – usually in minutes.

Looking Back to USPS 

At the beginning of this article, we talked about the disruption to many logistics companies’ ability to ship with their then-current provider for some USPS services. When we reflect on what we now know about business rules, we can see how a company using algorithmic business rules in their MCSS could simply modify their Best Way Groups in minutes, moving on to the difficult task of determining if they needed to have a direct relationship with USPS, or add an additional carrier.


However, those utilizing prescriptive business rules were in for a more complex process of just getting their MCSS to stop using the now non-existent services – a process that could take several days. By embracing agile approaches such as implementing algorithmic business rules, organizations can optimize their software's performance while aligning with their unique operational needs.

Proving the Value of Algorithmic Business Rules 

ProShip has been advising our customers towards algorithmic business rules for years. This allowed most of our effective customers to adjust their systems on their own. A few called in to walk through the process with our support staff, and even fewer had to have their prescriptive business rules changed.


While this wasn’t the ideal scenario to demonstrate the agility of our recommended algorithmic business rule process, the customers who followed our guidance were able to quickly overcome operational concerns. They then had the flexibility to evaluate their next steps – whether that meant exploring an alternative carrier, strengthening their relationship with USPS, or simply maintaining their current approach. Following our implementation recommendations gave them the time to make that choice.