To save big money on shipping costs, all you need to do is rate shop at the shipping scale. 

Here’s how it’s accomplished in RESPONSE…

Rate Shopping
Carrier rate shopping ensures that packages are delivered to customers at the lowest possible cost.  Our enhanced process eliminates wasteful (and sometimes error-prone) human decision-making by having pre-determined the customer's desired level of service.  The manifest (shipping) system is then able to automatically rate shop, in real-time at the shipping scale, from among all compatible carrier alternatives. 

Not At Order Entry
Most order management systems are designed to present the various shipping options (and perform rate shopping) during order entry.  In Response, however, the CSR is primarily concerned with determining how quickly the customer wishes to receive their shipment.  The options might be ground, 3-Day, 2-Day, Next Day AM and Next Day PM.   Rather than specifying UPS Ground, Parcel Post, or FedX Ground, the CSR will choose GROUND.  Instead of UPS 3-Day, Priority Mail or FedX Express-Saver they'll choose 3DAY. 

When the package hits the scale, and is scanned, the manifest system [we recommend CPS Platinum, $1,795.00] sees GROUND, for example, and selects the least expensive of the prescribed shipping options.  It might be Parcel Post for one package, UPS Ground for another, and FedX Ground for a third. 

The Typical Approach To Rate Shopping Is Flawed
The problem with the typical approach is that rate shopping is always performed for ALL services.  The operator must then manually choose which option to use.  Since nothing exists to prevent choosing, say, UPS 3-Day when the customer wanted overnight delivery, errors are bound to occur. 

The key, therefore, is to have the manifest system to choose the carrier rather than a human.  Because the rules are encoded (including exceptions like shipments to Alaska, Hawaii, PO Boxes, and so forth), and the destination and true weight of each package is known, the least-cost option -- while ensuring that the package will arrive in the required timeframe -- can be made.   

Shipping Station
A best practices approach shifts rate shopping from order entry to the shipping station where it belongs. Most of your shipments are probably for standard/ground service.  Depending upon package weight  and destination, one carrier may be cheaper than another [generally speaking, the greater the distance and lower the weight, the more likely USPS will be the least-cost route]. 

 Instead of choosing UPS Ground, USPS Parcel Post or FedX Ground in Response order entry (or on the web, for that matter) a generic shipping method called GROUND will be assigned.  When the manifest system (CPS Platinum from Harveysoft, for example) sees this, it knows to rate shop and instantly chooses the least expensive carrier – automatically!   If 3-DAY shipping were selected, for example, CPS compares all three day service options from USPS, UPS and FedX choosing the lowest cost option. 

Because you can't always know the weight and dimensions of a package (or even how many packages are required to ship a given order) in advance, this decision is best made at the shipping station.   

The Upshot
You won't select a specific carrier in RESPONSE (unless, for example, the customer specifically requests a carrier like FedX). Instead, you'll assign generic, service-level shipping methods (like Ground, 3-Day, 2-Day, Next Day AM and Next Day PM) depending upon how quickly the customer wants to receive the shipment.  The manifest system then chooses the lowest cost option to deliver in the prescribed time-frame.  The beauty of this approach is that the lowest cost carrier/service is chosen for each individual package at the scale.  The customer receives their shipment on time.  You save money.  It couldn't be simpler.

LEAST COST SHIPPING = SAVINGS
The savings typically add up very quickly this way.  Plus, the CSR is spared from having to make any decisions other than how quickly the customer wants their shipment to arrive.  It's fast, easy, effortless and will result in savings you simply won't believe!  Streamlining the rate shopping process as described above saves time, minimizes shipping errors, and, consequently, saves money.  The savings in the actual rate shopping process itself (i.e. choosing the least expensive of the multi-carrier options) can be huge.  One RESPONSE user is saving roughly $2,000 per week this way: 

"With the CPS rate shopping between UPS an USPS (with manifesting) we have lowered our average cost of shipping  $0.85 per package for the fourth Quarter 2003.  This literally saved us tens of thousands of dollars.  Reliability has been excellent.  The rate shop and processing is seamless and very quick.  From box scan to printed shipping label is about 6 seconds if you let CPS do the work.  Of course, if you want to change the carrier that CPS chooses for some reason or add insurance, it will take a bit longer.  With the rate bots we have set as well as other parameters (such as only ship to AK and HI using USPS) we find that there are very few packages that we want to choose something other than the 'best rate' shipping method.   Last 6-month period I looked at we were saving close to $1 per box on average ... that translates to about $2000 per week in savings over the old way of best-guess."      
Layne Lowery
Health Resources      

MULTI CARRIER
CPS supports all three major carriers - UPS, USPS and FedX - right out of the box.  Which means you can manifest all these shipments from one system simultaneously.  You'll never process these separately again! 

EASY TO USE
The operator simply places the package on the scale and scans our barcoded picktick label. CPS immediately prints a carrier-specific shipping label which is affixed to the box.  That's it!

RATE SHOPPING
Best of all is an awesome rate shopping feature that can potentially save you money on every package you ship. If you average 150 packages per day, you should see 100% payback within 30 days [using Health Resources' estimate below of $0.85 average savings per package]!  And that's just from rate shop savings. The increased throughput, accuracy and efficiency you'll also achieve make this a practically no-brainer decision.

STREAMLINED ORDER CONFIRMATION
When you experience how much quicker and easier confirming orders becomes with Response/CPS you'll wonder how you ever managed without it.  Not only is the process fool-proof (orders that aren't manifested will remain in W status and not be confirmed), we'll automatically retrieve the tracking #, actual weight and actual shipping cost for every package. You can even optionally track who picked and packed each order by scanning this data into CPS and mapping it back to Response.

NO PHYSICAL FILES TO TRANSFER
The Response/CPS manifest solution uses an advanced, real-time ODBC interface – not an antiquated file transfer.  CPS literally pulls the data it needs from Response on-the-fly as packages are processed at the shipping station. 

Click here to learn more about CPS Platinum and Enterprise.