From Pro Services to Self-Service: The Power of Configurable Parcel TMS Solutions

Unfortunately, many shippers are stuck with legacy systems that were designed for a simpler era, when “parcel management” simply meant printing labels for multiple carriers in the last 100 feet of a warehouse conveyor.  They were never meant for complex decision-making.  Implementing business rules meant waiting on overworked IT departments to free up resources or expensive third-party pro services to provide customized shipping system programming. 

Need to reroute packages to meet a new delivery zone? Add a surcharge for oversized items? Good luck waiting weeks—and paying handsomely—for someone else to write the code which became increasingly difficult to support. This approach isn’t just inefficient and expensive to manage — it’s unsustainable in terms of optimizing shipping costs and margins.

This article explores how a new generation of parcel Transportation Management Systems (TMS) is revolutionizing parcel logistics by empowering business users to take full control of their operations, minimizing dependence on costly pro services and IT intervention.  Parcel TMS systems provide no-code, configurable decision intelligence capabilities designed to help businesses stay agile and competitive in today’s ever-changing shipping environment.

The Hidden Costs of Pro Services in Parcel Shipping

Relying on IT teams or external consultants for system updates might seem like a necessary expense, but the real costs—in both time and money—can be staggering. Every change, even the simplest shipping rule, requires IT intervention to manage lengthy development, testing, and deployment cycles, leaving your business waiting weeks or even months for changes to take effect. And the costs?  Hourly fees can escalate rapidly, draining resources that could be better spent elsewhere.

The reliance on pro services also robs businesses of their agility. With carriers rolling out new surcharges and rate increases on a more frequent basis with little to no warning, waiting for IT or third-party pro service providers to react is frustrating to logistics managers whose job it is to anticipate and control costs throughout the order creation, allocation, and fulfillment process.  Even when pro services are deployed to make system changes, customized coding is cast in stone and difficult to change.  

Why No-Code Configurability is the Key to Intelligent Parcel Management

The ability to configure and apply shipping rules at order entry, allocation, fulfillment, and shipping is transformative for modern shippers. Business users can configure in minutes what would otherwise take weeks of legacy system customizations. 

Here are four critical areas where no-code solutions make a difference:

1. Diversified Carrier Network Service Solutions

Diverse carrier networks are crucial for reducing dependency on a single-source transportation service provider and minimizing the risks of ever-increasing costs and service disruptions. Configurable systems give shippers the flexibility to determine how, when, and where to use diversified carrier services efficiently while adapting to dynamic rates and customer delivery demands in real time.

Parcel TMS solutions provide the ability to:

• Automatically route shipments to alternative carriers once primary carrier-tiered incentive discounts are achieved.
  Route to carrier services based on weight, SKU type, destination type (e.g., PO Box, APO/FPO, etc.), delivery area, or regulatory compliance requirements (hazmat, international customs, etc).
• Reroute to zone skip services by zip code, city, state, or region.
• Factor carrier performance into service selection rankings, considering on-time delivery rates, damage claims, billing accuracy, and customer feedback.

2. Intelligent Packing Rules to Reduce Shipping Costs, Carbon Emissions, and Waste

Like legacy shipping systems, most enterprise logistics platforms were never designed to cope with the new complexities of parcel management.  OMS and WMS systems are designed for efficiency, to reduce the cost of fulfillment without regard for parcel shipping costs.  And now, with carriers increasingly focused on dimensional weights to optimize their cube utilization, poor packing procedures during the fulfillment process are eroding margins with unexpected dim weight adjustments and contributing to unnecessary environmental waste. 

By configuring and implementing more intelligent packing rules, shippers can reduce shipping costs and corrugate usage while making meaningful strides toward sustainability goals, thereby creating a win-win scenario for the bottom line and the planet with these benefits:

• Minimize dimensional weight adjustments by reducing air in packing processes.
• Reduce damage claims with safer packing rules for specific SKUs.
• Right-size carton selections to lower corrugate costs.
• Optimize vehicle cube utilization to cut emissions.

3. Adapt to Customer Preferences

The digital storefront is now the primary point where customers interact with brands for the first (and hopefully not the last) time.  Businesses are striving to present a more customer-centric experience, one that offers the most relevant and targeted purchasing experience. 

Configurable customer preference rules ensure each customer is presented with the most relevant and cost-effective shipping options by: 

• Applying rules that tailor delivery options taking into account PO Boxes, carbon-neutral opt-ins, work or store pickup addresses, rural and urban addresses, and other preferences.
• Labeling and document formats based on B2B customer requirements.
• Shipping charge markup or markdowns based on customer tier or order value.
• Automatically selecting the correct carrier billing account.

4. Host Data Mapping

As mentioned above, few OMS or WMS systems take complex rating, routing, regulatory compliance, or customer preferences into account.  This means that data that exists in another enterprise system needs to be mapped and translated into data that is useful for parcel management.  Legacy systems are forced to modify either the enterprise system (very expensive) or use pro service personnel to customize shipping systems.

Parcel TMS systems use no-code configurable rules to easily translate data elements before applying them to operations processes such as:

• Facilitating carrier, DOT (hazmat), or international shipping compliance documentation rules.
• Overriding host data to apply more cost-effective pack-out and shipping rules.
• Determining how and when to apply markups or account billing rules. 

Sendflex Parcel TMS: Putting Control Back in Your Hands

Sendflex Parcel TMS enables shippers to respond quickly to parcel industry challenges with speed and precision. By offering intuitive tools to manage end-to-end parcel shipping processes, the platform ensures agile and flexible operations without reliance on costly external resources.

Summary of Key Benefits:

• User-Friendly Configuration:  Sendflex parcel TMS enables non-programmers to easily configure decision trees to automate complex decision-making in shipping or upstream during digital storefronts, order allocation, and fulfillment.  With intuitive, no-code instructions, business users (and not engineers) can easily configure in minutes what would otherwise take weeks.
• Real-Time Adaptability:  With Sendflex, users can quickly adjust rules to keep operations moving smoothly, even in the most challenging markets. For example, during peak seasons, shippers can reroute shipments to alternate carriers to sidestep daily volume caps and peak surcharges, minimizing unnecessary costs and delays.
• High-performance Processing at the Speed of eCommerce: Sendflex goes beyond traditional systems with high-speed rating to instantly calculate shipping costs, optimized carrier selection to identify the best value for every shipment, and simulation modeling to test and refine shipping strategies before they’re deployed. By delivering actionable insights through these advanced features, Sendflex enables smarter, more cost-effective shipping decisions while reducing operational inefficiencies.

Configurable, no-code solutions are transforming the way shippers manage the more than 58 million parcels that move across the U.S. each day, bringing speed, precision, and control back to the forefront. With Sendflex Parcel TMS, businesses can eliminate IT bottlenecks, cut costs, and adapt faster to changing conditions.

Schedule a consultation with Sendflex to see our revolutionary platform in action.

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