How Shipium’s Universal Rules Engine Streamlines Business Rule Management

Business rules play a pivotal role in ensuring shipments are handled correctly and cost-effectively. However, for companies who still rely on legacy parcel shipping technology, managing rules is a complex and time-consuming process. In this post, we’ll explore the common challenges shippers face when it comes to managing rules with traditional systems, and how Shipium’s Rules Engine addresses these issues. We’ll also highlight the key functionality that makes Shipium’s Rules Engine a game-changer for modern shippers.

Challenges with Business Rules in Parcel Shipping

Business rule management can be a headache for shippers, especially those tied to legacy parcel shipping systems, which often lack the flexibility and efficiency needed to manage increasingly complex shipping demands. Let’s explore some common challenges.

Vendor reliance  

When using legacy parcel shipping technology, shippers often have limited control over creating and implementing business rules. In many cases, they have to rely on their technology vendors to make changes, which leads to costly service fees and delays in execution (sometimes up to months). Though avoidable, this type of vendor dependency significantly slows down the time-to-value and negatively impacts margins.

Tedious, time-consuming setup

When shippers do have the ability to set up their own rules, the process is typically cumbersome. Business rules in traditional systems are based on static shipment properties that must be manually defined, which is a time-intensive and error-prone task. Static configurations also lack adaptability in the face of evolving shipping needs or carrier changes.

Limited business rule flexibility

Legacy systems are often rigid in their ability to handle variability. Shippers are forced to manually declare shipment properties for each service method, leaving little room for flexibility. Adapting to changing carrier offerings or creating region-specific rules becomes nearly impossible, making it harder to optimize parcel shipping operations across multiple locations or during peak periods.

How Shipium’s Universal Rules Engine Creates Value

Shipium’s Rules Engine eliminates these traditional hurdles. Organizations leveraging it have seen rapid time-to-value and enhanced operational flexibility, which has helped to optimize their shipping strategies without excessive effort or costs.

Rapid time-to-value

Shipium’s platform enables shippers to set up and implement business rules with ease. It offers seamless integration with systems of record across the parcel fulfillment lifecycle (ex. OMS, WMS, TMS etc.) and automates initial property setup to streamline the process. Whether ensuring that hazardous materials like batteries aren’t shipped via air methods or creating rules for handling oversized items, Shipium provides a fully self-service console that simplifies rule creation and speeds up implementation.

The result? Shippers leveraging the platform no longer have to wait for vendor-initiated changes or manually set up shipment properties — Shipium helps them get up and running fast, improving operational efficiency.

Operational flexibility

Shipium also enables organizations to customize shipping rules based on a variety of factors, such as peak season demands, promotional events, or considerations for specific geographies (ex. Regional carriers for certain zones). Operators can leverage the platform to create context-dependent rules and adjust shipping policies as needed based on timeframes, regions, or other business-specific criteria. This flexibility ensures that shippers can respond dynamically to changing operational needs and network properties.

Key Functionality in Shipium’s Rules Engine

While Shipium’s Rules Engine offers robust functionality, there are a couple of highlights that we’ll call out here.

Rule creation and management

Shipium provides a browser-based UI (known as the Shipium Console) that operators can use to configure, separate, and dynamically manage rules across multiple shipping locations. This is particularly useful for companies managing multiple brands or business segments. Each location or brand can have its own unique workflows, business rules, and configurations, all separated within the platform for ease of management. It’s also useful for 3PLs, who can create distinct configurations on a per-customer basis to suit their unique needs.

Shippers can ensure seamless processing of shipments across different shipping origin points, carriers, service methods and more.

Flexibility of rule configuration

Shipium’s Fulfillment Contexts allow shippers to intuitively establish various rule configurations on the platform. This enables businesses to manage various carriers, service methods, injection shipping, unique label aspects etc. in a streamlined way. Shippers can choose to apply configurations either at a global level or at an individual shipping origin point, offering maximum flexibility.

This significantly streamlines the management of operations for companies with complex shipping networks that span multiple locations and/or brands. It allows them to separate business logic for different contexts while maintaining a single, cohesive platform for all shipping rules and overall parcel execution.

Conclusion

The challenges of business rule management are significant — however, organizations leveraging Shipium’s Rules Engine are not only addressing these pain points, but also unlocking new levels of flexibility and efficiency. 

From fast time-to-value to operational flexibility and advanced rule configurations, Shipium empowers operators to take control of their shipping strategies like never before. 

If you’re looking for a more scalable way to manage business rules across locations, brands, and systems, reach out to our team here to discuss your use case.