How to Use Data to Reduce Shipping Costs

For all the complaints about UPS and FedEx rate increases and the constant drip of new fees and surcharges, some companies are as much (or more) to blame themselves for their high parcel shipping costs. How? They’re missing the clear signals coming from their shipping data.

As a result, these shippers are leaking money in their parcel operation and don’t know it.

If you fall into this group, here’s what you may be missing and why your costs are too high:

• You are paying more due to the recent GRI and other rate changes than you budgeted for in 2024 because you did not take the time to understand the increases.
• You are not auditing for billing errors and service failures. Both carriers just reinstated more of their money-back guarantees, and you are missing potential refunds.
• You are paying for more expensive service levels that you do not need (e.g., sending packages Overnight Express when Ground would get it there just as quickly).
• You are not shipping orders from the best location (e.g., not fulfilling and shipping orders from the warehouse closest to the customer) and are therefore incurring higher-than-necessary costs.
• Similarly, sourcing products and materials from sub-optimal locations may needlessly increase inbound shipping costs.
• You are not shipping intelligently by missing opportunities to combine orders going to the same locations.
• You are a victim of fraud because unauthorized charges are being applied to your account.
• And finally (this is a big one), you are not charging enough for shipping because you lack visibility into your actual costs. Guessing or estimating the cost basis to ship customer orders can eat your entire margins, but you don’t see it.

And by the way, these are examples of the impact on cost. Many of these issues also impact service and customers’ experiences, which have their own costs. But you don’t know what you don’t know.

The challenge to overcoming these blindspots is creating the visibility to see these problems for yourself. Spotting the sources of waste and creating the fixes starts by using the parcel shipping data your company already has but is not using.

Learn the same lesson that over 1,000 TransImpact customers have: all of these issues can be found and corrected by looking at your data. Our Parcel Spend Intelligence tool’s dashboards and automated insights create instant and actionable ways for your company to address problems in your parcel operation.

To learn more, email info@transimpact.com.