Dropshipping has become a cornerstone for businesses looking to expand their product offerings without handling inventory management in-house. However, this model often comes with its own set of challenges. Lack of control over carrier and service selection, for example, can lead to less predictable delivery times, excessive costs, and/or limited visibility into the fulfillment process.
Shipium is designed to support dropshipping execution by giving shippers more control over the fulfillment decisions that come before orders are sent to vendors, as well as visibility into execution once they’ve been passed over.
In this post, we’ll explore the details of how Shipium supports key dropshipping workflows.
Common Challenges with Dropshipping
Before elaborating on how Shipium can help to improve your dropshipping operations, it’s worth further exploring the core challenges our solution addresses.
Lack of carrier and service selection control
One of the most pressing challenges in dropshipping is the lack of control over carrier and service selection. Shippers rely on suppliers' decisions, which are often fixed or based on static criteria — leading to inconsistent or excessive costs and unpredictable transit times. This also directly impacts the customer experience, as suboptimal carrier selection can result in missed delivery dates. Without a centralized solution, shippers often struggle to optimize this crucial aspect of fulfillment.
No visibility into execution
The next major challenge that shippers face related to dropship execution is that they have no visibility into what happens after an order is passed to their supplier’s network. This means they can’t understand important factors like:
- Which carriers / services were used and whether there’s opportunity for improvement
- Order processing times and how long it’s taking suppliers to fulfill
- Packaging decisions and their resulting impact on costs
- Broader insights on OTD performance, delivery speed etc.
This lack of visibility limits your ability to control the customer experience and shipping costs, while also preventing you from making data-driven process improvements.
How Shipium Supports Dropshipping Execution
Shipium is built to address these challenges head-on by putting operators back in control of carrier / service selection decisions and providing visibility into execution once orders are passed over to suppliers.
It’s worth noting that there are several unique dropship workflows that shippers can execute with Shipium, depending on business priorities and the complexity of their operations.
ML-Powered Carrier / Service Selection and Recommendation
This foundational workflow allows businesses to regain control over carrier and service selection when working with dropship suppliers. By integrating your OMS, WMS, ERP, or other system for managing orders with Shipium Carrier Selection, you can receive real-time carrier and service recommendations based on ML-powered transit time predictions and your cost constraints. On the latter point, Shipium’s Internal Rating Engine maintains up-to-date carrier rates that include surcharges (DAS, eDAS, fuel etc.) and accessorials across carriers, enabling a true apples-to-apples comparison when rate shopping.
This recommendation is then passed to the dropship supplier, who fulfills the order accordingly. This process ensures that the most cost-effective service is chosen without negatively impacting OTD, resulting in lower cost per package for the shipper and enhanced value creation for the supplier. Additionally, shipment confirmations provide valuable data on supplier pack-out practices, enabling continuous improvement in upstream rate shopping.
Execution Visibility
For shippers who want visibility once orders and carrier / service recommendations are passed to a supplier, Shipium’s Console provides an intuitive user interface for operators to view the status of shipments and drill down into shipment details (i.e. packaging that was used). Shippers who want this level of visibility have the option to recommend that suppliers leverage the platform to ensure that execution details are transparent. An added benefit is that data from executed shipments can be automatically passed to Shipium’s Analytics Suite, where dashboards can be customized to evaluate performance and costs by supplier over time.
Additional Dropshipping Workflows Supported by Shipium
We mentioned above that there are additional dropship workflows that Shipium can help to execute — while the nuances vary depending on the shipper, here are some examples of what shippers can do beyond passing a carrier / service recommendation:
- Packaging Optimization: Enhance packaging decisions for accurate rate calculations and reduced costs using Shipium’s Package Planner, with ongoing refinements based on shipment confirmation data.
- Routing Optimization: Optimize fulfillment by incorporating routing recommendations from Shipium’s Fulfillment Engine, directing orders to the most suitable origins to minimize transit times and control costs.
- Estimated Delivery Date (EDD) Optimization: Improve customer experience with dynamic, accurate EDDs, optimizing the entire fulfillment process for speed, cost-effectiveness, and accuracy through seamless integration and enhanced control.
Wrapping Up
Shipium's approach for supporting dropship execution provides strategic advantage for shippers. By empowering you with control over service selection and visibility into execution, as well as control over packaging, routing, and delivery date presentation, Shipium enables you to overcome unpredictable timelines and excessive costs to build a streamlined, efficient, and customer-centric fulfillment process.
If you’re evaluating dropshipping strategy, reach out to our team here to discuss your use case and see how Shipium can help.
Anurag Allena
Anurag Allena
