The Talent in the Room

Last week Rick Erickson of Agile Pacific and I traveled to Dublin, Ireland on a project I have been working on with Agile Pacific since last fall. Going into Dublin progress on the integration to Oracle via the XML Gateway had been moving at what I have to describe as a snails pace due to developers/integrators on the project being in Time Zones up to 12 hours apart.

After being sequestered in a very small conference room with approximately 8 others for 30 hours over 3 days the Oracle integration had been modified, finalized, and tested to the clients satisfaction. The AgileShip and AgileView user interfaces had been modified to the clients specifications. The Parcel Carrier labels had been modified to the Carriers and client specifications, a test PLD upload had been submitted to UPS the DHL daily file upload had been configured, Pallet corner labels had been created and approved, and a System Administrator had been trained.

At one point during the afternoon of Day 3 the Client Project Manager asked me what was left to do. I took a minute to review my notes and checklist and was able to tell him we were done.

The project went from moving at a snails pace and weeks away from completion to being ready to be put into production in 3 days. I was once again impressed with what can happen when you get the talent in the room.

Whats more important?

A question recently posted in the Parcel Shipping Group on Linkedin:

What's more important for managing your shipping logistics costs: multi-service single carrier solutions- for example, working with one carrier (e.g. UPS) but being able to take advantage of multiple services (parcel vs. freight) to reduce costs; or multi-carrer solutions (e.g. UPS, Fedex, DHL) to find arbitrage opportunities to reduce costs?

My opinion:

Over the years I have seen companies take several approaches to this question. Many have gone with a single carrier and their provided shipping system, some have gone with multiple carriers and multiple carrier provided systems, others have gone with a Third Party solution with multiple carriers configured in it.

The companies that have taken the third party solution approach have far better control over their shipping processes, their shipping data, their carrier relationships, and ultimately their costs.

The reasons for this are numerous. Flexibility, you only have to train users on a single system, your shipping data in a single silo regardless of carrier, which can include all modes of transportation rather than dispersed amongst carrier provided systems, or in a stack of hand written Bills of Lading. You have a single point of integration rather than supporting multiple integrations from carrier provided systems assuming they are integrated at all, to allowing yourself the ability to analyze your shipping data internally and compare your analytics to the analysis the carriers provide you. Or to easily provide that information to an outside firm for the analysis, not too mention what the open architecture brings to the negotiation table.

While 3rd Party shipping solutions do come with a price tag, if designed, managed, and utilized effectively the ROI can be very impressive. I recommend taking control of your transportation expenses.

To Blog or not to Blog...

I have kicked that question around for the better part of a year now and finally came to the decision that lack of time be damned, I was going to do it.

The intent of this Blog will be to provide informative posts derived from 20 years in various aspects of the shipping industry. From thoughts on Contract Negotiation strategies to best practices and pitfalls of Transportation Management projects, Industry news, and from time to time, a rant.

Thank you for stopping by, I hope you find the Blog informative, helpful, and on occasion, humorous.

- Todd