The Benefits of Having a Multi-Carrier Parcel Management System

26th August 2020

The pandemic is pushing businesses to change their cross border e-commerce strategy.

This raises many different challenges . For one, retailers are finding it challenging to either onboard or find a reliable carrier in a new country.

Secondly, the distribution landscape has evolved to include multiple parties, which makes keeping track of crucial data across multiple channels difficult and overwhelming for retailers and logistics executives.

A multi-carrier parcel management system (MCPMS) is fast becoming a vital solution for retailers to scale their cross border e-commerce strategy.

With demand for same-day delivery growing leaps and bounds, retailers can employ an MCPMS to deliver a proactive customer experience rather than reactive damage control. One of the fundamental challenges that an MCPMS enables logistics executives to address is the channeling of data from multiple streams into a single platform.

Here are some key ways in which an MCPMS enables retailers to achieve data-driven logistics intelligence.

MCPMS Provides Real-Time Logistics Insights through a Centralized Data Location

A MCPMS integrates logistics information from multiple carriers on a single platform. Traditionally, logistics executives have depended on multiple systems to derive information from different carriers.

This method demands substantial allocation of time and resources which leads to increased business overheads.

In addition, the manual operations involved increases the chances of errors in collecting and understanding information. Often, working on data across multiple systems leads to missing of key details, which can lead to errors in order fulfilment.

Providing an enhanced customer experience with same-day deliveries has become the new competitive landscape for retailers. Given this context, errors in order fulfilment can impact the customer experience and thereby affect repeat sales.

Such errors can attract and intensify C-suite involvement, especially when a huge parcel volume is involved and an error leads to consequences across the volume.

With an MCPMS, all carrier data is integrated in one place, making it easy and convenient for logistics managers to make data-based decisions in real time.

As data is fed into the repository real-time, executives can make rapid decisions without impacting the customer experience at any level.

In fact, a good MCPMS ensures retailers deliver an experience where customers are totally oblivious to the complexities of the multiple channels involved in making their delivery.

MCPMS Delivers Competitive Advantage with Unified Up-to-Date Data

For retailers looking to expand their business capabilities to cross border e-commerce in the new logistics landscape, success depends on how fast they are at onboarding new carriers.

This capability for quick onboarding helps retailers in 2 crucial ways – they are able to secure their cross-border market quickly with a reliable carrier can can meet customer demands for a customized shopping experience.

Being quick and being the first to meet customer demand is crucial in achieving a competitive advantage. With the right MCPMS in place, retailers are able to achieve both.

By unifying data in a single place, an MCPMS gives retailers real time insights into data from multiple carriers. In addition, MCPMS offers detailed carrier reporting. With access this data, executives are able to compare carrier information, challenge carriers with accurate insights, and choose, retain or eliminate carriers, from the supply chain, accordingly.

Location of data in a single place gives retailers unparalleled visibility into key carrier information. As a result, retailers are able to consolidate data more efficiently, compare data across carriers, and choose the ones that fit their budget.

This data-driven decision-making quickens carrier onboarding, and makes the process of transition to cross border e-commerce much smoother.

Also, such hands-on access to real-time carrier data enables executives to expand their carrier network. As a result, they are able to allocate the best carrier to every delivery and ensure excellent customer experience, each and every time.

By unifying data, MCPMS enables retailers to establish a solid carrier network that can prove to be a great asset as the business scales to meet rapidly-changing customer delivery demands.

MCPMS Data Integration Enables Retailers to Leverage New Opportunities

By bringing data from across logistic channels into one place, an MCPMS makes it easier for retailers to identify new opportunities for cutting costs, improving revenue, and enhancing the customer experience.

For example, with same-day deliveries becoming the new competitive ground for businesses, retailers can use single-location data provided by an MCPMS to:

Choose the most-suited carrier for a particular geography, customer segment, or cost
Optimize parcel delivery times based on carrier and location
Obtain accurate insights into carrier delivery challenges and revise supply chain processes for a better customer experience opportunity.

For example, carrier data may show an extraordinary performance by a carrier in a specific geographic location.

However, data consolidation shows that the same carrier is unable to deliver high performance in other locations. This comparison of insights, enabled by MCPMS data integration, enables executives to choose the right carrier for a location depending on performance, and thereby ensuring excellent customer experiences wherever they’re located.

This real-time data also enables executives to leverage opportunities for cost-cutting in supply chain processes. For example, using a single system for all carrier information enables warehouse managers to compare data and choose the carrier that is best for the given route, location and speed of delivery.

Similarly, managers can track their parcel spending real-time and take proactive steps to cut costs with informed, data-backed decisions. For example, when there is a huge volume of orders to be shipped to a single location, it does not make sense to use different carriers at different rates to make the shipment.

Instead, the consolidated carrier data can be leveraged to identify a single carrier offering the best price for the entire shipment. Just imagine the costs that could have been incurred without an efficient MCPMS in place!

MCPMS Data Integration Paves the Way for Better Industry Standards

Accurate data capture at every level is the lifeblood of any supply chain process. An MCPMS is an invaluable tool not only by facilitating such elaborate data capture but also by being able to unify data in a single location.

With consolidated data, logistics executives are able to compare data across key performance indicators and revise such indicators over time depending on the evolving needs of the industry and customers.

They are able to define the key metrics that indicate growth and success at order fulfilment level with real-time data capture and consolidation. These can then be analysed to identify improvements for more efficient processes and better customer experiences.

Download our free e-book to learn how successful brands overcome the 3 most common barriers to cross border e-commerce.