If you viewed our most recent webinar “Parcel Shipping in Style: A Reveel Apparel Case Study” you may recall that a viewer asked if there are ways to make shipping more eco-friendly without spending more money. It is an important and particularly prescient question, not only because it is good and reasonable to take steps to reduce the significant carbon footprint and environmental impact associated with transportation and logistics, but also because consumers increasingly want to do business with brands that embrace sustainable practices.
In the webinar, our Vice President of Customer Success Michael Falls responded by first noting that “the most eco-friendly options are cost-saving options,” an important point that underscores the unique opportunity parcel shippers have to make a difference in efforts to create a more green supply and demand chain. Few business functions have the ability to create such a win-win situation.
Some of the many specific ways shippers can encourage more sustainable practices, lower their costs, maintain their service levels, and differentiate their brands puts this fact in stark focus. Some of them include:
- Matching the parcel to shipping services that have a smaller carbon footprint, but still address the buyer’s needs: The best example of this is the ability that shipping intelligence gives shippers to instantaneously determine if shipments being sent by air – the method of transport that has the greatest environmental impact – can instead be delivered by ground transportation and still surpass customers’ expectations while satisfying service-level guarantees. Importantly, many shippers are taking this to the next level with multi-carrier strategies that choose the right carrier for each shipment based on cost, delivery speed and service quality.
- Creating packaging that is made from recyclable materials and which is designed for efficiency: Sending a small item in a larger box is never a good look, particularly today. Not only can shippers use eco-friendly materials to address their packaging needs – a core element of many brand stories – but they can also right size them to decrease waste and better manage dimensional weights. Such an approach also helps to eliminate the oversize and overweight surcharges that can dramatically impact what it costs to deliver any package from point A to point B.
- Aligning fulfillment and inventory management efforts: Many organizations, particularly apparel manufacturers and retailers, also are finding that the more strategic approach to parcel shipping intelligence, and the data-driven decision making it makes possible, enables shippers to significantly decrease costs by integrating their e-commerce fulfillment operations and brick-and-mortar inventory operations. These companies are bundling shipments for both functions when it makes sense, and fine tuning their operations to be more efficient and lower emissions by optimizing fulfillment and inventory processes to minimize the distances items travel.
Many of our valued customers at Reveel are already using their parcel shipping operations in these ways to give their sustainability efforts more teeth and to take advantage the many ways that shippers are ideally qualified to help the organizations they serve do business smarter and more effectively. And as Michael pointed out, they can do this while lowering costs. Let’s make every day #EarthDay.
To learn more about Reveel’s Shipping Intelligence™ Platform using Parcel Spend Management 2.0 technology, and the greener approach to shipping it helps make possible, get a demo or sign up for a free trial – a trial that remains free unless the shipper decides to upgrade.
