Parcel - June 2008 - (Page 27)

Step 2: Identify the Issue They were willing to take an extra amount of time to tape up the side of the package (the tape dispenser was right there next to the scale) — but didn’t like navigating to other areas of the shipping software to select the residential indicator. I found that interesting and acknowledged to myself that the key here wasn’t educating the shipper as much as it might be ﬁxing the software. While management knew of all the accessorial issues and had sent out notices regarding dimensions and other aspects of the shipping operation that needed to be adhered to (there was even a post-it on the terminal), shippers were doing what was convenient for them and/or they were misinformed. Managing your accessorial fees involves periodically reviewing your invoices from the carriers and then checking them against what your shippers enter into the system. Many shipping managers do not review their shipping invoices periodically. They go directly to accounts payable, and the only time they get to see them is when a problem arises (and you can deﬁne problem as something that has been going on long enough to get the attention of the CFO). provides city, state and ZIP validation. Moreover, there are options that can validate to the street or apartment number. The invoice stated that the ZIP Code was wrong and the carrier had also modiﬁed the street address. Why was the software accepting it? Who was wrong? The answer was neither: The shipper wasn’t using the address validation. We turned the basic validation on and tried to process the same package; sure enough, it caught the ZIP Code error right away and prompted with the correct zip code based on the city and state. That was $5.00 of the $6.00 fee on the invoice. With high-volume shippers, we suggest to them as a best practice that they scrub their address at the sales order stage. For varying reasons, there are companies who validate addresses at the time of shipping. In this case, we simply turned it back on and we changed the privileges of the shipper so they couldn’t turn it off. Not elegant, but it worked.I wondered how many other shippers out there that have turned this feature off once and never turned it on again? This is another example of staying on top of your invoices and periodically checking your shipper’s process. The return on investment with these changes can be dramatic — how much does it cost to change the privileges? Or to work with your shipping provider to create new default values for certain areas of the product to reduce keystrokes, or to always prompt in for other values? Even if some engineering hours are required by your provider, the ROI can often be measured in a few weeks. So grab an invoice, look for some accessorial fees, review them with your shipper and make sure his data matches the carriers, and if not, work with your software provider to make it fool-proof. Oh, and don’t forget to put that tape dispenser right next to the scale for the soft sided packages too! Peter Starvaski is the director of product marketing for Kewill Enterprise Shipping. Peter can be reached at peter.starvaski@kewill.com or visit www.kewill.com for more detailed information. ■ Step 3: Fixes and Getting Buy-In Shipping software today should have convenient methods for providing dimensions, setting residential indicators and working with any of the other accessorial fees. Even though they are not a fully automated, black box solution, the best shipping software solutions out there allow for setting defaults at a variety of levels (by location, user, carrier, commodity, customer, etc.). In this case, we handled the dimensions through the software as it allowed for creating custom boxes; we created two soft packages with dimensions using the height for two of the most common commodities they shipped. For other soft packaging, we set the width and length but prompted just for height to reduce the amount of data the shipper was required to enter. Another example that can be cumbersome is the use of address validation. When we continued to look at invoices, I noticed a number of address corrections. With the invoice in hand, we processed one shipment that had a $6.00 address correction fee. The shipment went through — no problem. I didn’t understand it, the standard software www.PARCELindustry.com May 2008 27 http://www.kewill.com http://www.intravex.com http://www.intravex.com http://www.PARCELindustry.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Parcel - June 2008

Parcel - June 2008 Contents Editor's Note What Would Augello Say? Success Means Never Being Satisfied Moving from Manual to Automated Fulfillment Regional Carriers Move to the Forefront Understanding Warehouse Management Systems Negotiating Carrier Contracts It’s All About the Data! How Long Will The East-West Trade Imbalance Last? Educate the Shipper, or Fix the Software? Product Profile On the Mark New Products & Services Advertiser Index Wrap Up

Parcel - June 2008

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