For years, shippers have operated blind with little visibility into their shipping activity or ability to analyze the many thousands of shipments they might make in a given day – let alone benefit from the ability to know if their existing carrier contract is optimal or even if they are losing money. More than a few have found after receiving a quarterly invoice that they shipped an entire product line without knowing it was subject to overage charge because the package was a half inch too long or even worse learned they lost revenue on every sale because an important surcharge exemption expired before the carrier contract did.
To help identify such risks and to take advantage of best practices and carrier contract negotiation expertise, most shippers have for decades turned to a long established and mature market of parcel negotiation consultants. From our founding in 2006 to the launch of the Reveel Shipping Intelligence™ Platform two years ago, Reveel was such a firm and like almost all of our competitors, we relied on the industry’s standard model of compensation – a gain share model in which we received a percentage of the savings we secured for customers over a set period of time.
More on how the gain share model works can be found in this article in Forbes – The Data Science-Driven Transformation of Parcel Shipping – by our CEO and co-founder Josh Dunham. Not surprisingly, as a result many shippers naturally experienced – and continue to experience – frustration and fatigue with a never-ending cycle of consultants’ fees. Every time they engage a consultant to help them save money their consulting fees subsequently increase.
One of our aims in creating the Reveel Shipping Intelligence™ Platform – the first platform that provides shippers with actionable data and real-time insights that enable them to radically lower their parcel shipping rates and work more effectively with their carrier to craft the most optimal contract for their business – was to empower shippers to break this vicious cycle. We wanted to provide parcel shippers with direct access to the very information they need not only do what they previously paid consultants for, but to do it better.
All of which raises the question: Is Parcel Consulting Dead? Have SaaS-based platforms like our own eliminated the need for parcel carrier contract analysis and negotiation consultants in much the same way that business intelligence and other data science innovations forever altered the role of accountants, travel agents, real estate agents and stockbrokers?
To explore these questions Reveel recently sponsored a webinar with SupplyChainBrain. Hosted by Editor-in-Chief Bob Bowman and featuring Kathryn Small, chief of staff at While Labs, it delves into these important issues and questions. And the answer?
It may surprise you. To find out, view the webinar by visiting the link below.
