Five reasons to use integrated shipping software

For growing businesses – or simply those looking for smoother processes and greater efficiencies – integrating specialist software could be a smart move.

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Executive summary

Specialist third-party software can help fuel growth, driving efficiencies and helping businesses to scale-up.

Shipping is a key area where software can be useful, with applications integrating with your e-commerce store and connecting directly to shipping providers.

This can mean greater automation and acceleration of processes, more streamlined operations and fewer mistakes being made.

Using third-party shipping software can also be a costeffective way to enable growth, without having to invest heavily in developing your own solutions.

As businesses grow and order levels increase, bringing in additional help is often essential.

But that help doesn’t have to just come in the form of extra staff. There is a wide range of software available that can help you with almost anything, from accounting and HR to customs clearance and warehouse management.

Adding solutions such as these to a business can help it to scale-up and grow. They can crunch data to find efficiencies and opportunities, streamline your administrative processes, and take care of a lot of the heavy lifting to allow you to focus on running your business.

One of the key areas where software can support business growth is in shipping. Here, software applications integrate with your e-commerce store to allow you to connect directly to multiple providers. They can automate and accelerate many administrative processes, give you flexibility of choice when shipping, and provide faster access to carriers and their rates.

If you’re thinking of integrating shipping software into your business, here are five reasons why doing so could be a good idea.

It can save time

Integrating shipping software can help you to claw back some precious time. In fact, it’s claimed that the right software can save up to 80% of your team’s time by automating fulfilment tasks such as generating labels and validating addresses.¹ It can also reduce the number of separate systems you need to use when processing orders, alongside many other time-saving benefits. The overall principle is simple but effective – automation is key to efficiency.

The right software can save up to

80%

of your team’s time

It can reduce errors

Taking manual processes out of the equation means reducing the potential for human error. Creating labels is one area where this can help, as automatically transferring information and inputting data can lead to a reduction in mistakes. But you could also benefit from a simplification of the whole order management and distribution process, because the fewer steps there are for you to take, the fewer opportunities there are for errors to creep in.²

It can help streamline your operations

Beyond the time-saving benefits of automation, there are other important ways that shipping software can help make your business more efficient. It may be through being able to manage multiple shippers – or domestic and international orders – in a single application. It could be the ability to do batch shipping, where you can combine orders into a single batch and print the labels together.³ Or perhaps your business has grown in complexity and shipping software is a way to smooth out your processes. For example, if you’re using a warehouse management system or inventory management system, adding a third-party shipping solution too could help knit everything together so the front-end and back-end of your business work together more efficiently, without the need for additional software development.

It can unlock growth, cost-effectively

Third-party shipping solutions can enable you to grow as a business – by adding more scale and complexity across sales channels, for example – without having to invest a lot of money developing your own solutions to integrate the shipping process. And as well as enabling you to process many more orders quickly and efficiently, it could also free up your time to concentrate more on driving value in the business.

91%

of U.S. consumers actively track their packages

It can improve the customer experience

Integrating shipping software into your business can have added benefits for customers too. One of these is in communications, with systems able to help you provide more accurate notifications and tracking details. This can be crucial for a good customer experience – a study of U.S. consumers shows that 91% of them actively track their packages.⁴ Meanwhile customers can also benefit from the efficiency gains that software can deliver for your business. If it can speed up the processing and dispatch of orders, it’s a win win for everyone.

It can improve the customer experience

91%

of U.S. consumers actively track their packages

FedEx works with a wide range of providers to connect your e-commerce platform or marketplace to the shipping and delivery services you need. Explore our range of FedEx Compatible Solutions here.

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