Imagine a world where your shipping process runs like a well-oiled machine—no missed deliveries, no tracking nightmares, and definitely no irate customers flooding your inbox. Sounds like a dream? Well, welcome to the reality of automated shipping.
Gone are the days of manually sorting orders, printing labels one by one, and crossing your fingers that packages arrive on time. With automation, businesses can streamline operations, cut down on errors, and keep customers happier than ever. From AI-powered tracking to smart routing, shipping automation isn’t just a luxury—it’s a necessity in today’s fast-paced eCommerce landscape.
But how does it all work, and more importantly, how can it save you time, money, and stress? Buckle up because here we unpack everything you need to know about automated shipping and why your business desperately needs it. Spoiler alert: it’s a total game-changer.
What is Shipping Automation?
Shipping automation involves automating your commercial shipping operations. That means using technology to automate tasks such as accepting new orders, picking up items from inventory, packaging ordered items, giving packages to selected carriers, and tracking them until your customer receives them at their door.
But the perks of automated shipping go far beyond streamlining your supply chain, it can supercharge the growth of your business as well. That’s not all! Automating your shipping operations also drives efficiency, which leads to improved productivity. In other words, you can fulfill more orders, processing them faster and without errors.
Considering 79% of companies with high-performing supply chains achieve higher revenue growth than the average within their industries, with 15% lower supply chain costs, 50% fewer inventory holdings, and 3 times faster cash-to-cash cycles, we’d say integrating shipping automation is a no-brainer today.
Let’s take a deeper look into what automated shipping can do for your e-commerce business in the next section.
Benefits of Shipping Automation
Now that you know what shipping automation is, it’s time to discuss why it’s worth your time. Here’s a look at what automated shipping brings to the table:
Save Time and Resources
Managing your shipping operations manually is bound to take time and be prone to errors. You can sidestep this drain of time and resources by integrating automated shipping into your operations.
Shipping automation solutions help you automate repetitive tasks of accepting orders and selecting carriers and shipping packages, all while maintaining meticulous records and timely updates on all your shipping processes. This translates to faster order processing time, reduced shipping costs, and enhanced productivity.
Read more: How To Choose The Right Shipping Carrier
Also, this allows your team more time to focus on their core tasks, helping you leverage their skill set better.
Improve Package ETAs and Drives Customer Experience
Typically speaking, the faster the package reaches the customer, the better it is. With automated shipping software streamlining your shipping processes, you’re better placed to offer your customers fast deliveries without a heavy price tag.
These tools help you compare carriers and identify the best option and service based on the location to deliver your package fastest and with minimal costs. Also, when your customers receive their orders quickly, it translates to brand loyalty and an improved customer experience.
Offer Scalability to Keep Up with Your Business Growth
Automated shipping software keeps up with your business growth. It has the flexibility to accommodate varying demand volumes and is especially suited to businesses that witness seasonal sales fluctuations.
This capability allows automated shipping tools to ensure your business functions optimally regardless of market conditions.
Drive Conversions
The combined benefits of automated shipping software create the perfect conditions to boost your conversion rates. These tools simplify shipping and inventory management, ensuring you fulfill customer orders seamlessly. Real-time tracking updates keep customers informed and reassured, while cross-carrier performance insights help you choose the most cost-effective shipping options—saving your customers from inflated costs.
In short, automation enhances efficiency, improves customer satisfaction, and drives more sales.
Gain Insight into Shipment Operations
81% of supply chain professionals say analytics plays an important role in reducing landed costs. Automated shipping software offers comprehensive shipment tracking in real-time and facilitates effective management of documentation, ensuring your logistic operations run smoothly.
These tools offer timely updates on your package status (milestones, locations, ETAs, etc.), enabling you to track the progress of your package delivery efficiently. This level of visibility doesn’t just help you make informed decisions on the go but also translates to improved customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
How to Implement Shipping Automation?
Here is a step-by-step guide on how you can implement automated shipping into your shipping operations:
1. Analyze Your Existing Shipping Operations
The first step in implementing automated shipping software is gaining a clear picture of your existing shipping operations. To assess where you stand today, track and document every step involved in your shipping process, from receiving an order to successfully delivering it to your customer.
While analyzing your shipping process, identify bottlenecks, pain points, and stages that are most prone to error. Further, assess your shipping time, destinations, order volumes, and customer expectations. By gaining a clear understanding of these, you’ll be better placed to understand the offerings of your chosen automation and quality it to be the right one for your business.
2. Choose the Right Shipping Automation
Now, it’s time to select the automated shipping tool for your business. While there are many solutions in the market, consider exploring LateShipment.com to reduce your search time.
LateShipment.com offers a comprehensive suite of solutions that help facilitate a streamlined and efficient post-purchase experience for your customer and improve your operations. Here’s a look at our offerings:
Delivery Experience Management
Lateshipmment’s Delivery Experience Management software facilitates order-tracking experiences that help you supercharge your customer engagement and repeat purchases while also minimizing your customer service costs.
Features such as automated shipping notifications, self-serve order lookups, notification triggers, and flows, as well as proactive issue resolution, help you reduce your Where Is My Order (WISMO) inquiries by 72%.
Parcel Audit and Shipping Refunds
Our Parcel Audit and Shipping Refunds solution helps you assess your carriers’ performance with diligent comparative analysis of delays and other issues to help you make informed decisions when selecting carriers. Not only that, but this insight also aids you during contract negotiations, ensuring you get the best possible deal.
Returns Experience Management
Our Returns Experience Management software facilitates branded returns and exchanges portals accessible from your storefront, generates downloadable shipping labels and automated return status updates, and offers customization of return rules to ensure your customers’ return process is as smooth as possible.
Shipping Insurance
Get comprehensive risk coverage to protect your package against loss or damage. Our centralized claims management helps you submit claims, monitor status, and even escalate claims if need be. Further, our shipping insurance solution also monitors carrier performance, holding them accountable by tracking their incident rates.
Ready to supercharge your shipping automation, explore LateShipment.com today!
3. Integrate The Shipping Automation into Your Tech Stack
Once you’ve selected your automated shipping system, it’s time to integrate it with your tech stack. Your chosen solution must integrate with your business systems. For instance, LateShipment.com’s offerings come with 1200+ built-in integrations with shipping carriers, e-commerce platforms, CRMs, helpdesk tools, and more to ensure smooth operations.
At the time of integration, test real-time updates and ensure that the data synchronization is accurate. Further, conduct demos to confirm the data flows smoothly across systems with minimal delay.
4. Train Your Team on The New Tool
Next, take the time to train your team on the new tools and processes. Create a comprehensive schedule that educates employees on all aspects of the automated shipping system right from order processing to tracking customer communication.
5. Test The Shipping Automation Tool
It’s tempting to hit the ground running, but try to hold back to test your system first. This can help you identify potential glitches and address them before your automation comes on stage. Further, it also gives you a chance to refine its performance based on your team’s feedback during tests.
Once you’re satisfied, pull back the curtain and let your automated shipping system shine.
Challenges and Considerations Involved in Shipping Automation
Like many things in life, automated shipping also has a flip side. Fortunately, the associated challenges aren’t a lost cause. Here’s a look at the challenges and considerations involved in shipping automation and how to overcome them:
Data Consistency and Accuracy
Problem: Automated shipping systems require data like humans require oxygen. And so, when this data is inaccurate, inconsistent, and outdated, it can jeopardize the efficiency of your software. You see mismatched product information, inaccurate inventory levels, and outdated shipping addresses can translate to shipping errors and customer dissatisfaction.
Solution: To tackle this, consider integrating robust data validation policies and automated data updated across business systems. Further, conduct periodic audits to recognize errors and discrepancies and address them before they snowball into problems that jeopardize the smooth functioning of your shipping operations.
Customization
Problem: The next challenge that you might face with automated shipping systems is a lack of customization. Your business is unique, making your pain points, needs, and goals one of a kind, too. So, a standard automated shipping software will fall short in streamlining your shipping processes.
Solution: To ensure you don’t have to make do with a standard tool, explore automated shipping systems that offer customization options that allow it to mold to your needs. For instance, LateShipment.com offers many customization capabilities, such as a custom order tracking page, custom shipping notifications, customizable return rules, on-brand returns portals, etc. After all, your business deserves a solution that becomes yours completely.
Employee Resistance
Problem: Automation is often looked upon unfavorably by employees, perceived to be difficult to understand, and requires a steep learning curve. Because of this, integrating an automated shipping system can be greeted with employee resistance, especially by those who are comfortable with traditional methods.
Solution: To ensure onboarding is smooth, make sure you facilitate required training and maintain communication lines open with your team. Take the time to elaborate on the solution’s benefits and how it makes your team’s life easier. Offer thorough training and continuous support to help your team adopt the new way of working.
Budget Considerations
Problem: The next consideration to keep in mind with automated shipping systems is their cost. While these solutions reduce the cost of shipping in the long run, they can come with significant upfront costs in terms of training employees, integration, and the like.
Solution: To ensure you have all the facts, conduct a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis to gauge your chosen automated shipping system’s ROI. Factor in immediate costs as well as long-term returns and competitive advantage. Assess pricing models and select the offering that best aligns with your budget and business needs.
Read more: Shipping Strategies for SMBs to Reduce Costs
Technical Errors and Downtime
Problem: Sure, your automated shipping systems might not require a coffee break like your employees do, but they are prone to errors and technical glitches that might suddenly bring about downtime, disturbing your shipping processes and compromising your productivity.
Solution: To ensure this doesn’t happen, establish a maintenance and monitoring schedule. Be sure to update your system and integrate it with dependable tech support from your chosen automated shipping software provider. Further, consider implementing contingency measures and backup plans to have a game plan ready to go in case of sudden system failures.
Continuous Monitoring and Optimization
Problem: Integrating an automated shipping solution is never a one-and-done deal but a continuous exercise that requires diligent tracking and optimization to ensure its performance aligns with evolving business requirements.
Solution: To ensure you don’t fall back on your software performance reviews, consider establishing an audit cycle. As part of this, track metrics such as error rates, cost savings, customer feedback, and order processing time. And then leverage these to tweak your automation workflows to perform better.
Conclusion
Shipping automation isn’t just a fancy upgrade—it’s the secret ingredient for smoother operations, happier customers, and fewer grey hairs for your logistics team. Sure, adopting automation comes with its challenges, but the benefits? Faster growth, fewer errors, and a shipping process that doesn’t feel like an unsolvable puzzle.
And if you’re looking for a smarter way to automate, LateShipment.com has your back.
- Delivery Experience Management software ensures real-time order tracking, keeping customers informed and reducing those WISMO inquiries by 72%.
- Need help to pick the best carrier? The Parcel Audit and Shipping Refund solution analyzes performance, helping you negotiate carrier contracts and even securing refunds for late deliveries.
- And when returns inevitably happen, the Returns Experience Management software streamlines the process, making it painless for both you and your customers.
- Also, our Shipping Insurance software helps you protect your packages on the fly at a low cost compared to market rates.
Ready to ship smarter? With LateShipment.com, automation isn’t just an upgrade—it’s your unfair advantage. Check out LateShipment.com in action. Book a demo today!
