San Francisco–based ShipJunction offers a shipping solution that provides its customers’ businesses with a reliable, flexible and efficient back-end solution that interfaces seamlessly with their existing order management software.

Partners Joe Carr and Mike Sowa, online gifting and wine retail veterans, believed that their SaaS-modeled transportation management system, www.shipjunction.com, would be a powerful solution for their clients. Carr and Sowa understood the challenges involved in matching appropriate shipping labels with customer gift cards and an efficient warehouse pick ticket — if processed incorrectly, businesses had to answer to dissatisfied customers. Carr and Sowa spoke to other wineries and gift providers about their transportation management system idea and everyone agreed it was a smart business model.

Now that Carr and Sowa found a way to streamline and automate the operations process on their end, they turned to FedEx to help implement a streamlined and seamless shipping experience for their customers on the front end, as well. Using FedEx Web Services, ShipJunction combined a carrier-compliant label with its customers’ message card, offering the ability to create unique enclosure messages on printed labels.

FedEx Web Services was an attractive solution because it streamlined customers’ web experience without being tied down to a geographic location. ShipJunction found that the FedEx Web Services technology helped to provide a fast and easy integration experience.

While Carr and Sowa’s initial concern was performance reliability in comparison to ShipJunction’s existing solution, they didn’t worry long. Carr says, “We shipped over 30,000 packages during our peak period between Nov. 14, 2009, and Dec. 31, 2009, and we never had a single issue connecting to FedEx Web Services and getting information.” He continues, “We were initially concerned about performance reliability, but we experienced no failed transactions and averaged 5,000 transactions daily during our peak. We submitted 1,000 transactions to FedEx Web Services, received a response and created a label in .94 seconds. And we are only one of probably thousands of customers using FedEx Web Services during peak.”

When they first started out, the ShipJunction IT team was curious about how the integration would work, but Carr found the documentation very straightforward and easy to implement. In terms of customer support, ShipJunction hasn’t had any issues. Carr says, “Mobility is a huge factor for us. You don’t have the issues you would have with something like a ship management server. And not having to deal with that is an important aspect for us.” Carr appreciates the ease of use of FedEx Web Services and the fact that he hasn’t had to contact anyone for support help. “You don’t need to ask any other questions other than just being pointed to a web server. It’s a great technology.”

When asked if he would recommend FedEx Web Services, Sowa responds, “Absolutely. The only worry that I had was how the system would handle the increased load. I was concerned that through the month of December, we would experience slowdowns or load issues. But we really didn’t experience anything at all. Slowdowns are our No. 1 potential pain point and we didn’t hit anything. The odds that other companies were hitting those services harder when we were hitting it in our busiest time were high, but there still weren’t any slowdowns.”