Carrier Selection

Optimize and execute shipping decisions at warehouses, stores, or anywhere else. Carrier Selection provides an enterprise suite of shipping management tools on top of the industry's best carrier network.

Shipping Operations

Flexibility and responsiveness is key. Easily manage your shipping operations and make changes that quickly update your network without expensive and slow customization or development work. Carrier Selection is the modern shipping management system that enterprise operators love to use because its rich set of features and customization capabilities.

Carriers & Contracts

Set up and manage carriers with a modern console that doesn't look like Windows 95. It's an afternoon activity to turn on or off a pre-integrated carrier in the network.

Carrier Setup

Set up carriers with a full suite of configuration options, including access to manage service methods, rate tables, surcharge modifiers, fulfillment centers mapping, label configurations and augmentations, and package configurations.

Virtualized Contracts

Upload your carrier contracts to make it quick and easy to manage selection. All carrier contract structures are different, so when Shipium adds a carrier to the network, the platform also models out the carrier's contract structure. That makes it simple to upload your rates and surcharges. This eilminates the need for pass-through systems, like label printing API platforms, who simply use your carrier credentials to request rates or print labels.

Surcharge Management

Ensure fully loaded costs are used during selection by leaning on our surcharge management capabilities. Shipium staffs an in-house transportation ops team who keeps all carrier surcharges up to date, such as fuel surcharges which can update daily. Then, as a part of contract setup, you declare your ammendments to the surcharge cost structure. The result is a fully loaded rate comparison ensuring the cheapest options are always picked.

Peak and Other Carrier Surcharges

Carrier surcharges are extra costs that carriers assess for shipping packages, typically to cover fluctuating operational expenses. Peak season surcharges, also known as demand surcharges, are temporarily added by carriers to their base shipping rates during periods of high shipping demand. Shipium provides support for different peak surcharges across all carriers which flow into decision making throughout the platform, and manages them for you.

Zip-Zone Mappings
Offload carrier ZIP-Zone mappings to the Shipium platform. Mappings are automatically set up when you create a new origin, like a warehouse or store, and Shipium automatically stays updated as carriers routinely change their service areas.
Time In Transit (TNT)
Pick and configure from multiple time in transit (TNT) data models based on carrier and method. Several different products use TNT values to make calculations or inform decisions, so Shipium offers three different carrier TNTs options for customers based on the unique needs of their business.
  1. Use your TNTs
  2. Use Shipium's TNTs
  3. Use the carrier's TNTs
Rate Expiration
Track and be alerted to expiring rates to ensure no service disruption. When uploading rates, Shipium will know when they expire, and will alert both you and the customer service team to ensure rates are updated in time.

Fulfillment Network

Configure all properties of your fulfillment network, such as origin fulfillment days, carrier pickup times, and more. An understanding of your network across warehouses and stores is important to calculating the correct carrier option because of the variability of fulfillment processes.

Origin Properties
Declare properties across all origins in your network, like warehouses or stores. Set details like location, fulfillment days of the week, and holiday periods, among others.
Carrier Pull Times
Set the pull times for every carrier and service method per origin, since those times have a major impact on data modeling and rate shopping decisions.
Dynamic Origins
Create dynamic origin points within carrier selection APIs, which is a great fit for companies who have a large or dynamic fulfillment network, such as marketplaces.

Advanced Features

Your supply chain is unique, so you need a technology partner who can support whatever variations are required for your operations.

Returns
Manage returns alongside the rest of your shipping operations. The platform supports most major carrier returns services, and makes it easy to fit into your returns process with various configuration capabilities.
Carrier Selection Rules

Set up inclusion or exclusion rules that take priority during the typical selection process. Customers can ensure their unique use cases are met or scoped before automation occurs.

More control with rules

Injection Shipping / Zone Skipping
Add zone skipping to your network strategy by using Shipium's injection shipping capabilities. Combine different ways to use carriers and locations to make the ideal long-haul lanes that optimize for reduced costs and improved speed.
Carrier Volume Limits

A simple self-service tool lets you set minimum and maximum thresholds per carrier, per service method, per-origin, or per unique property that matters to your operations. Those limits propagate across all Shipium instances once set up.

Set volume limits

Hazmat

Shipium partners with carriers to provide safe and proper shipping of hazardous materials. Material types include Limited Quantities (LQ - replaced OMR-D), Lithium Ion Products, and general IATA/DOT materials, and more.

  • Category types like lithion ion batteries
  • Class types like flammable or poisonous
  • Container types like aluminum or wood
  • Quantity management
Ship from Anywhere
Ship packages from any origin, including warehouses, stores, and more. It's easy to set up known origins in Shipium's Console, or utilize flexible APIs to pass a dynamic origin point during the carrier selection process.
  • Warehouses
  • Distribution Centers
  • Stores
  • Dropship
Futured Dated Shipments
Create labels up to 60 days in advance, plus rate shop 14 days in advance without label creation.
Customizable Groups

Define you own groups of carrier service methods and rules per delivery zone with our powerful Configurable Ship Option feature. Rules included are carriers and methods, priority level, postal codes, destination matching, package matching, and tag matching.

See the power of our configurable ship options

Hundredweight

Hundredweight is a unique consolidation method that some parcel carriers offer, which Shipium supports.

Learn how we make Hundredweight easy

Bulk Label Creation

Use bulk API requests within Carrier Selection for rate shopping or label generation. Choose between multiple shipments and one destination, multiple shipments and multiple destinations, and multiple shipments and multiple destinations for rate selection without label creation. The API also allows you to void or cancel calls, too.

Enterprise speed with enterprise flexibility

Bound Printed Matter

Denote BPM shipments with the carrier service methods that support it through both the console and API parameters.

Packaging

Configure packaging options that can be updated at any time.

Package Types

Set up different packaging types, like boxes versus softpack bags, which can be used a preference during selection, and can impact optimization of carrier selection decisions.

  • Boxes
  • Poly Bags
  • Tubes
Package Dimensions
Set up different packaging dimensions, which can be used when making carrier selection decisions.
Cartonization

Utilize a cartonization API to determine the appropriate set of packaging types and sizes needed for shipping one or more items.

Package sizing made easy

International Shipping

Shipium provides a set of international shipping management capabilities on top of the industry's best international carrier network.

Global Shipping
Ship to anywhere in the world from a U.S. Origin using supported carriers like Passport, or utilize major carriers like UPS, FedEx, and DHL to target specific regions.
  • Passport
  • UPS Worldwide
  • FedEx International
  • DHL International
Fully Landed D&T

Handle fully landed duty and taxes for international shipping using carriers who are full-service international carriers on the platform, like Passport, or partner with a D&T technology partner, like Zonos.

US to Canada Shipping
Ship from a U.S. origin and deliver to a Canadian destination using the available cross-border carriers.
Intra-Canada Shipping
Conduct intra-Canada shipping with the necessary label requirements using Canadian carriers. All shipping requirements are considered including use of French and English languages, YYYY/DD/MM date structure, Canadian holidays, dim weights in metric units, Canadian VAT by province, daily manifests for multiple shipments, label requirements including rural routes, and use of Canadian dollar currency.
Canada to US Shipping
Ship from a Canadian origin and deliver to a U.S. destination using the available cross-border carriers.

Selection Process

Shipium provides the most sophisticated selection process out there, combining automation based on data science with enterprise configurability for maximum customization.

Eligibility Check

Since the carrier network is a centralized cloud platform, Shipium only have to integrates into a carrier once. As part of that integration, the team models out contracts while also declaring properties of the service method. The result is a product like Carrier Selection taking on most business rules for you, eliminating a big chunk of your day to day headaches managing rate shopping.

Shipment Properties
Eliminate the tedious business rules you traditionally have to set up based on shipment properties. For example, Shipium knows that batteries can't ship via Air methods, or that a USPS-adjacent method is required for a P.O. Box. For every carrier in our network, count on us to shoulder the burden.
  • Mode
  • Hazmat
  • Air vs Ground
  • Perishable
  • P.O. Box
  • APO
  • Accessorials
Service Areas
Immediately know which areas are serviced by regional carriers. Shipium maintains service area coverage for all carriers on the network, eliminating any need for you to manage it.

Desired Delivery Date

Optionally pass in a date constraint during the selection process. Legacy systems check based simply on carrier SLA times per service method, but Shipium uses a dynamic and sophisticated stochastic data model to understand what will actually happen, thus opening up cheaper shipping options to still hit a desired delivery date.

Network Properties
Set important properties of your fulfillment network, such as origin locations and fulfillment days, or carrier pull times. These properties impact the calculation of an accurate delivery date.
Real-Time Dynamic Modeling
Apply a real-time model to estimations. Deciding the right carrier at 7pm Friday is different than 7am Monday, which is different than 7am Cyber Monday. Shipium utilizes a big mix of real-time factors to ensure the best selection is made.
  • Time of Day
  • Day of Week
  • Day of Year
  • Holidays and Seasonality
  • Destination Type
  • Macro Conditions
  • Eligible Carriers
  • Packaging
Platform-Wide Data Modeling
Benefit from historical transit data that spans the entire Shipium platform. All data is normalized and anonymized, then added to models to continue to refine accuracy.
Business Days of Transit
Optionally switch to use Business Days of Transit, which allows you to choose a carrier and ship method that will meet a delivery date based on origin FC operating day calculations. Ship date and time can be adjusted via API call - label needed or not - within carrier rule sets, and customer can select least expensive carrier and shipment method to hit delivery date. Carrier and ship methods can be altered for after shipment cut off times.

Rate Shopping

Always pick the cheapest shipping option amongst those that are eligible and can hit a date constraint.

Fully Loaded Rate Shopping

Rate shop with fully loaded costs. Legacy rate shopping systems struggle to keep up with rate card continuity as carriers quickly shift rates every week. Meanwhile, companies who built their own rate shopping technology on top of carrier APIs often make a decision based on partial costs because most carriers do not return surcharges via their APIs, resulting in back charges a month later. All that is eliminated with Shipium and guaranteed fully loaded costs while rate shopping.

See how we solve this problem

Real-Time Rate Card Validation
Ensure the rates negotiated between you and a carrier are in fact the rates that should be charged. In some instances, carriers set up customer contracts improperly on their side, and overcharge customers, which isn't discovered until months later during a parcel audit project. With Shipium, customers have identified this discrepancy immediately but identifying a mismatch between contracted rates uploaded to Shipium, and the rates used by carrier during label purchase, thus alerting the issue for immediate fix with the carrier.
Modular Rate Shopping
Conduct just a rate shop without label purchase using Shipium's modular APIs, making it easy to fit an upstream rate shop into your process before downstream label printing and manifesting occurs.

Stable Labels

Modern label technology provides fast, easy to use, and reliable printing a dependable part of your operations.

Label Management

Utilize rich configuration tools to customize labels based on your unique needs.

Custom Label Augmentations

Customize ZPL to change the layout, data schema, or design of your labels. Use a self-service tool to do it yourself, or ask our team to help.

Custom labels

Label Configurations

Change the size and orientation of labels, including modifying DPI resolution, with an easy to use interface.

Easy label management

  • Required Signature
  • Saturday Delivery
  • Transportation Type
  • Customs
Multi-Tenant Customizations
Companies like 3PLs or marketplaces who might be servicing multiple tenant customers require the ability to customize labels to that tenant, like add their unique logo, return address or custom data. It's easy to set that up with a self-service interface.
Perishable Goods

Notify carriers of perishable items in a shipment. All carriers appreciate being notified of a perishable shipment, while some carriers require it. It's easy to set up perishable attribution on labels.

Special Properties

Easily set up special label properties for certain carrier service methods, like bounded matter, delivery signature requirement, weekend delivery statusing, and denoting different shipping types, amongst others.

Hot Failover

Maintain rapid label printing to support enterprise-grade throughput with fallback options should a carrier's label printing API underperform a certain threshold. The next cheapest option is immediately available if the best option does not hit a response time limit.

Carrier failover

Labels without Costing

Generate shipping labels without having to provide costing information like carrier service method rates. This feature might be useful for your organization if you wish to print labels without Shipium calculating a shipment cost, and the carrier will bill you once your package has shipped. Using Labels without Costing also could be beneficial if your organization employs tenants in your network and they have their own confidential carrier service method rates; the carrier will bill your tenant once the package ships based on their established rate.

Manifesting

The hassle of manifests are made easy through automation and simple tools you are going to love to use.

Automated Manifesting

Notify carriers of ready-to-go shipments as they happen with automated manifesting capabilities.

Scheduled Manifesting
Create a batched Manifest then notify carriers of the group of shipments to schedule a pickup time.
Manifest Summaries
Print out a daily manifest from the Shipium Console to hand to a carrier upon pickup. While not automated, some carriers require this style of manifest handoff, and Shipium makes it easy through an easy to use tool.

Reporting & Analytics

Understand your shipping performance with delivery reporting and analytics package.

Network Performance

Evaluate the performance of your carriers and origins across your network.

Carrier Mix

Get a detailed breakdown of what carriers are getting volume. Dive in and analyze how those carriers are performing related to package dimweights and geographical zones.

Origin Performance
Examine the shipping performance from specific origins, like the carrier mix or packaging breakdown.

Metrics

Modern operators need modern metrics.

Order-to-Ship
Get order-to-ship (OTS) metrics across origins.
Ship-to-Deliver
Get ship-to-deliver (STD) metrics across origins, carriers, and service methods.
Click-to-Deliver

Get an order-to-deliver (OTD, or sometimes call Click-to-Deliver or CTD) composite metric that combines OTS and STD to give you a total view into ecommerce fulfillment performance.

Measure Click-to-Deliver

Exports

Download the data you need to accomplish other mission-critical tasks.

Historical Shipments
Pull business reports of historical shipments to better understand and analyze operations and customers.
Report Configuration

Get granular report insights through reconfigurable parameters that include date ranges, multiple aggregate values and which origin to include. Each can provide the selected visual whether line graph, chart or another visual. Most important, it will provide historical performance metrics to allow for continual analysis and enhancements.

Post-Order Operations

Improve internal operations related to active shipments.

Shipment Search Lookup
Search shipments within the Shipium Console with criteria of name, start/end dates, test mode inclusion, statuses inclusion and preferred format type.
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