What Is Optimized Shipping and How It Can Reduce Costs

If your organization is looking to reduce costs, one key area to adjust is your shipping services. Companies that have yet to examine their shipping methods or who grow complacent about making their shipping as efficient as possible risk losing business to competitors who do pay close attention to the logistics involved in moving items from point A to point B in a timely fashion.

This article gives an overview of shipping optimization and provides tips to help you streamline your supply chain processes.

Shipping optimization involves examining and analyzing your current shipping operations to improve them. The goal is to boost efficiency and cut expenses, following industry best practices and strategies to achieve your goals.

Without shipping optimization, you cannot readily see where shipments are during delivery, and neither can your customers, who expect they can keep track of what they ordered.

You must optimize shipments to keep your costs down, from manual labor entering and processing orders to packaging and delivery. When manual entry causes errors, you will have to spend more time and effort correcting the problem and pay more to ship the same product out. At the same time, you’ll have to apologize to customers and hope that they continue to use your services despite the errors.

Use a warehousing inventory management system that helps you keep tabs on all products in storage, which is crucial for shipping products in a timely manner. You’ll receive updates when stock is running low, such as if a particular item becomes popular through a marketing campaign, positive reviews, or seasonal demand.

Check if you can obtain discounted or free shipping supplies from your carrier. If that’s not an option, explore whether it’s practical to purchase supplies in bulk to get a discount that way. With bulk purchases, you add consistency to your shipping materials, which further controls costs.

To further optimize shipping costs, consider implementing rate shopping software. This tool provides real-time cost comparisons across multiple carriers, such as USPS, FedEx, UPS, and DHL, allowing you to review various shipping options based on current rates, delivery speed, and service levels. With this software, you can quickly evaluate which carrier and service best align with your business needs and budget, ensuring you make the most cost-effective and efficient shipping decisions.

Rely on automation wherever possible. For example, install shipping software that integrates with your company’s order management system. And if you don’t currently use a modern warehouse management system, it’s time to deploy one to automate your order fulfillment and inventory management processes.

There are usually multiple ways to get products from your distribution center to their final destination. The trick is to discover the most efficient routes for delivery. With delivery route optimization software, you can compare historical data and analyze it in the context of any challenges arising now, such as bad weather, natural disasters, or road closures due to maintenance or accidents blocking the way.

If your customers are spread across the country, partnering with a centrally located warehouse, like B&C, can be a game-changer. This approach allows you to reach both the East and West Coasts with reduced shipping times and lower costs, as central locations can offer more economical rates for nationwide distribution. By strategically choosing a warehouse in the middle of the country, you streamline logistics, improve delivery speed, and enhance customer satisfaction.

Part of delivery route optimization involves consolidating shipments through careful planning. With fewer split deliveries, you naturally reduce the costs of transportation and you run your company more efficiently.

“Where is that package I ordered last week?” You don’t want to leave customers wondering when they can expect delivery.

As soon as items leave your warehouse, customers deserve to know where they are and see an estimate about when to expect their arrival. Modern software solutions make real-time tracking a snap and are at the heart of any plan for optimized shipping. You can promote your use of real-time tracking in your marketing and branding to reassure people about how quickly they can expect to see items land at their homes or loading docks.

Enable shipments to move faster and more efficiently by implementing zone skipping, which involves sending packages straight to the regional hub of hour carrier, skipping the shipping zones in between your site and theirs. It’s especially beneficial to employ zone skipping when you ship huge amounts of packages from the warehouse over multiple regions. And since you are reducing the number of hands touching these packages, you will be able to cut down on damage and lost shipments, which further delay the products’ arrival.

The key to maintaining customer loyalty and getting more referrals and repeat business is to manage communications with customers and their expectations.

Customers will want real-time tracking and expect you to give them reasonable time frames for delivery. To that end, you will want to enable open communication using their preferred methods, including text messages and emails or viewing order status through online tracking.

The last thing you’d want is for people to call your office and demand an explanation because you offered no other way to check on an order’s status. That wastes their time and will tie up your staff as they try to find an answer using limited information.

With so many moving parts to consider for optimized shipping, it makes sense to partner with 3PL professionals such as the team at B&C Logistics. We are experts in shipping optimization and can help you improve your B2B or D2C shipments.

To learn more about our approach to optimizing shipments or to consult with us to improve your processes, please contact B&C Logistics today.