For example, you can try using our FedEx/UPS Rate Calculator to help view the rates of your specific shipments from either major carrier.  The calculator goes through each carrier’s rates, the specific year, service type, weight, and minimum charge and then generates a handy rate sheet that will help you see how much your shipment will cost and can potentially save you money with the right specifications and rates.

Source Consulting has these tools easily available on our main site as well as other services to help your company reduce shipping costs.  With an arsenal of tools and great advice, it will be much easier to save money and put money into important business ideas and initiatives.  It just simply requires initiative and the right knowledge on your businesses’ part for it to succeed!

In a new Marsh white paper, the report states that “too many organizations lack complete visibility into their supply chains and do not understand the risks they face.”  Some companies may wonder why this statement may be important.  The easiest answer to point to is how globalized supply chains have become and the heavy disasters that severely impacted several supply chain last year including the Japan earthquake and the Thailand floods.  The report includes startling statistics such as the fact that less than half (about 40%) of businesses after the flooding in Thailand stated they would reevaluate their supply chain resiliency.

Big name brands that needed constant product flow were highly affected and the disasters showcased whether or not companies had any preparations.  For instance, Sony was not prepared for any disasters as they were heavily affected by the Thailand floods.  24% of their products and services sales fell after the flooding which they attributed to the disaster.  On the other hand, Seagate, the disk manufacturer, was also affected by the Thailand flooding but were able to predict their financial output and mitigate their risk with their diversified operations and broad supply chain.  They saw a strong performance this past quarter with a net income of $1.1 billion.  Risk management is an important part for optimizing any supply chain as these two examples have shown.

Source Consulting is committed to helping companies find ways to help mitigate areas of risk within their company by helping reduce shipping costs and empower businesses with innovative shipping technology.  We can help optimize your supply chain and help give the advice and tools your company needs for the risks ahead.  Whether it is through our company or through a careful self-evaluation, make risk management a priority rather than a passing thought.

Some of this shipping language mainly comes during the carrier negotiation process.  As you continue a relationship with a particular carrier, their goal is profit driven with incentives and goals the carrier representatives are set to achieve.  Because of this, the carrier negotiation process becomes highly subjective since there is no one system or calculation that the carriers use to determine incentives from one shipper to the next.  Instead, the representatives will constantly use ‘relationship’ or ‘value-added services’ to try and create a favorable deal without any improvement on rates.  The solution is to make sure to address this issue with your representative.  Although value add services and a good relationship are great to have, great discounts and better rates are even more important and imperative to getting a good discount.  Making sure to vocally acknowledge this note can go a long way to helping secure reduced shipping costs in the future.

We at Source Consulting can make sure that you are well-prepared for all aspects of a carrier negotiation and can help you on your way to discounts.  Along with helping you prep for the negotiation and what to expect, our experienced employees with carrier experience and amazing, innovative tools will help give you the proper analytics and research to help build up a case for shipping discounts.  The best strategy to reducing shipping costs is a full-proof one!

Forbes reports that Amazon, the website retail giant, could not be only going after Apple’s marketshare in the tablet and smart device markets but also could be targeting the shipping industry as well or more specifically, the logistics.  Instead of an outright entry into shipping, Amazon has made increasingly larger decisions into logistics system such as its purchase of Kiva, which makes robots for warehouses, earlier this year to continue cutting it’s operational costs.  Amazon is also heavily into leveraging third parties onto it’s website for further monetary gains while creating an easy-to-access markteplace.  Even further, Amazon is testing pick-up centers instead of using direct shipping.  These moves have started to encroach their market into the logistics territory.

Although it’s simply one competitor, much like Windows attempts to encroach into the smart phone market space of Apple and Google, Amazon is encroaching on a very steady shipping industry and could have bigger implications in the near future.  FedEx, for instance, has had a record 2011 and with a new competitor, those record years will be consolidated amongst more competition and less potential customers.  For the consumer, it should start off, at least, as a positive platform simply because it will add an additional competitor into a small market place although again, how far Amazon can be expected to invest into the field has yet to be determined.  Reducing shipping costs should become much more common along with discount opportunities and fierce bidding wars between the competitors.

Source will continue to help businesses best figure out their shipping contracts in whatever direction the future holds for the shipping industry.  With a history of successful savings for shipping companies through parcel audits and invoice analysis, our experienced employees continue to stay up-to-date and well-informed about the future of the shipping industry and ways to help businesses out.

As you can see from this infographic, technology and supply chain/logistics concepts evolved hand-in-hand, helping each other to move forward.  Logistics academia is also shown in a slow evolution from the first mention of logistics in 1919 to only the recent adoption of supply chain managers in 2010.  Additionally, supply chains and logistics have played a very concealed role in many industries but has slowly gained in exposure and interest over the past years, making for a fascinating transition.

Source Consulting is a part of the vast spectrum of businesses and people within logistics and supply chain management.  Our business is to help create opportunities for reducing shipping costs for businesses involved with carriers and produce lasting solutions for future shipping opportunities.  How does your business fit into the historical legacy of logistics and supply chain management?

[Thanks to Ben and Supply Chain and Observer for sharing this great infographic with us!]

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Source : http://www.scm-operations.com

One key innovation is what many people use daily – the Internet.  However, this focus goes beyond just the superficiality of our day-to-day Internet usage but the importance of social media and the up-to-date news.  As suggested in another article, social media is not just a channel for open discussion – it can be a risk that can affect industries and businesses including the carriers.  Make sure to actually utilize and pay attention to social media and aggregate news channels to stay above upcoming challenges as well as bracing for potential hazards.

New technology and transportation software that streamlines your communication can be another important area to help reduce shipping costs in the long haul.  By streamlining your communication from your management to supply chain, your company can potentially save money in the long term.  New technological innovations make this possible such as the cloud, in which information can be inputted at any time and accessible wherever there is an Internet connection.  Current technology is restrictive, not allowing a clear line of communication – companies that utilize cloud technology can speak with other businesses and customers easily and smoothly.

Source Consulting also has innovative, new transportation software to help reduce shipping costs for customers.  We have released two new pieces of great software for our customers that can help streamline and simplify the shipping process.  Halo, for instance, is a multi-carrier visibility system that helps transportation managers see all shipments from all carriers on a single screen and identifies important shipments.  Much in line with the new rise of tablets and smartphones, Halo is viewable on any smart device from your desktop to your iPad.

Understanding these innovations makes sure you are up-to-date with modern-day technology and helps your company succeed and reduce shipping costs in the long run.

Why is this important to note for those that don’t use USPS for their shipping? There are many implications and shipping aspects that could potentially affect the other carriers along with customers.  One of these effects deals directly with FedEx which has a direct contract with the USPS to move First Class, Priority, and Express by air.  Most likely, analysts are predicting a substantial cut when it’s contract is up for renewal.  This change could result in a possible power play by UPS for more share or have the air freight change to ground services instead, resulting in a different revenue stream.  For customers, both shippers and receivers, expect both price fluctuations from the carriers and possible service extensions or cuts.  The USPS, for instance, is expecting to cut Saturday service, which would divert customers more to the major carriers and an increased traffic.  It will be more important than ever for consumers to make sure they are reviewing their invoices and negotiating appropriate deals.

Even with all these changes, one important lesson for any shipper to keep in mind is to always be open-minded and knowledgeable about the options you have in shipping and ways that will financially benefit your company.  For instance, our company always stays abreast of the changing shipping field and which rates and discounts are available for businesses.  Stay connected with Source as we continue to analyze and watch shipping news along with ways we can continue to help you reduce your shipping costs.

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Our referral program is made to help reduce shipping costs for both the companies and individuals you suggest to us and reward you for your contribution! Source Consulting takes pride in both our integrity and strong partnerships, which we hope to carry with all of our referral partners as well. We have two programs available for referral partners – one for infrequent referrals and another for constant referrals. With these generous compensation programs, we hope to create unlimited growth opportunities for the right people!

Your referrals will be introduced to our program that will reduce their shipping costs. Our pricing structure works to exemplify this guaranteed savings – there are no set-up costs, no operational charges and no long-term contracts. We only get our payment when we are able to save money for a customer – a successful practice that has helped us to be successful both for our current customers and accolades. You can find more information on our referral program. We look forward to working with you soon!

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Much like when you are given back money for a mistake on your credit card bill, finding and notifying your carrier about these invoice errors is the process of getting back money that belongs to your company.  These refunds occur mainly due to human error and oversight which happen on a regular basis.  Simple mistakes such as a delivery driver inputting an incorrect description of the destination can be logged as refundable errors and happen consistently.  One of the easiest ways to make sure you reduce your shipping costs is to have, in place, an auditing system of being able to validate the legitimacy of each discount, accessorial fee, and transportation charge on your carrier’s invoice.

However, the work itself is not simple and requires knowledge on the errors to look out for and the patience and multiple eyes to look through each of the invoices.  Source Consulting has a full-proof carrier audit service that can guarantee you huge cost savings and best-in-class visibility services to ultimately reduce your shipping costs.  The service is simple, taking only a few minutes to complete and yields substantial results.  The greatest aspect of this service is that your company does not have to guess whether the service really can bring in savings – Source offers a free 30-Day Shipping Audit Trial which can showcase the savings before you commit.

A parcel audit is an important way to reduce costs to your shipping.  An employee will look through carrier invoices to check for any mistakes between the carrier’s invoice and your initial shipment.  An example of an error would be if a carrier changes the address of the final destination, which would enact an address correction fee.  However, unless this change happens because it impedes the driver’s ability to deliver the package, it is an incorrect fee and should be refunded back to the company.  One easy-to-remember comparison would be to describe this process much like when you are exiting a store, like Costco, and one of their employees checks your receipt to your items for any discrepancies.  They are checking to make sure all the fees are correct and accounted for, just like you are with your parcels.

The reason to perform a parcel audit is because it will help keep you knowledgeable about the transactions being placed on your shipments and ultimately, to reduce your shipping costs by finding these errors.  These audits are to make sure that not only is the carrier rightfully getting what’s owed to them, they are also making sure your company is also getting correctly paid for all included services, which is true of any good business.  To not perform any parcel audits would be glancing over nearly guaranteed savings because of the nature of the shipping business.  Even though carriers like FedEx and UPS have integrated advanced technology to try and automate the shipping process, much of the work still comes across human inputs which allow for a margin for error.

Understandably, conducting parcel audits are not simple.  They require knowledge about what mistakes to find and a task force to physically go through each invoice for each parcel, which can be quite daunting depending on the size of the company and the amount of shipments going out.  Other than hiring in-house auditors, there are trusted third parties that can conduct parcel audits for your company such as Source Consulting.  Don’t let these guaranteed savings get away from your company in this tough economic climate.