Expedited shipping is a critical need for businesses that rely on fast delivery of goods to keep production and fulfillment humming. Because it’s such a time-sensitive exercise, the last thing a shipper needs is antiquated processes that slow down expedited shipping — a contradiction in terms if ever there was one.
This is where data analytics comes into the picture. Shippers need the ability to access and analyze real-time data from multiple sources in order to surface insights that can help them refine and optimize their expedited strategy. Or alternatively, a trusted logistics partner with cutting-edge analytics capabilities that inform such a strategy.
Put another way, data analytics is a key tool for making more intelligent decisions on how best to leverage expedited shipping, improving efficiency, performance, and customer satisfaction. It can also help companies assess risk, develop contingency plans, and know when to enact them.
A Data-Driven Approach to Expedited
Data analytics enable businesses to fine-tune their expedited strategy by analyzing a variety of trends across the industry, logistics, supply chain, the economy, and customer preferences and behavior. From these broad-based insights, companies can make strategic decisions on the types of situations that call for speed vs. more economical standard service.
Applying data-driven decision-making to expedited shipping accelerates speed to market and reduces downtime. It helps companies ensure that critical materials arrive on time, without needlessly adding to budget expenditures.
Business intelligence tools can be used to evaluate things like seasonal demand fluctuations; which products or categories will require expedited shipping, and under what circumstances; and benchmarking to determine how competitors are using it to their advantage.
TMS, route optimization, and supply chain management software help companies evaluate carrier performance to find the most reliable and economical shipping options; identify opportunities for network optimization to reduce costs and lead times; and optimize inventory management to balance stock levels and reduce the need for higher service levels.
In the B2C/e-commerce world, CRM and data analytics platforms can find patterns in customer behavior to identify segments that prefer faster shipping. They can also build predictive models to calculate what customers are likely to choose faster shipping options based on past behavior, and in what situations.
How Shipping Rules Help Determine Service Levels
Data analytics can also be used to help determine shipping rules for an organization. Shipping rules set up parameters for processing, routing, and delivery based on various criteria (speed, carrier selection, cost, destination, package characteristics, etc.). They allow companies to automatically align shipping strategies with business needs and goals.
Once shipping rules are in place, data analytics can provide insights into trends, anomalies, and optimization opportunities that drive smarter decisions and greater efficiency. For example, a company may find a particular warehouse has unusually high expedited shipping costs based on its location and carrier rates. Analytics can drive insights that lead to better-informed carrier negotiations, as well as alternative shipping methods with comparable SLAs at a lower rate.
Optimizing Costs With Data-Driven Expedited Shipping
As in the above example, data analytics plays a crucial role in managing shipping costs by assessing the financial impact and balancing speed and cost within budget constraints.
Inventory management plays a major part in making determinations on the need for speed. By optimizing inventory allocation within a distribution network and placing stocks as close to customer demand as possible, companies can realize significant transportation savings by reducing reliance on expedited shipping.
AI-based predictive analytics can help accomplish this by providing greater forecast precision so stock positions can be optimized based on demand, shipping costs, capacity, and service levels. Thus, strategic inventory allocation means expedited shipping is used only when it adds the most value. Efficiency is maximized and unnecessary expenses minimized, helping improve the bottom line.
Data Insights Enhance Performance, Boosting Customer Satisfaction
Insights from predictive analytics enhance customer trust by providing real-time updates, especially critical on same-day and next-day deliveries. By crunching historical data, weather conditions, traffic patterns, and carrier performance, the latest data tools drive more accurate ETA predictions. Shippers can then give customers more precise, reliable delivery windows instead of vague estimates, wowing them and boosting loyalty.
Predictive models can also foresee potential delays, enabling proactive notifications about any schedule changes so customers are informed and expectations managed. They can also monitor their shipment from sortation to first scan, regional hub, and “out for delivery.” A high degree of transparency builds trust, as customers feel more in control and confident in the company’s promise.
Data Analytics Helps Drive Expedited Strategy, Execution
Expedited shipping is growing in importance, especially as the double whammy of “need it now” urgency and disruptions that disproportionately hit standard service push demand northward. In order to properly assign resources to expedited service, data analytics are the key to balancing cost and risk.
COGISTICS Transportation, a leading provider of supply chain and logistics services with a 30-year-plus legacy, offers shippers personalized treatment 24/7/365, anywhere on the globe. Our top-flight expedited shipping services, backed by a collaborative communication platform, provide consistently timely, secure, and efficient deliveries. Each shipment is tracked from origin to destination, with notifications via phone, text, or email based on your schedule.
A member of the global logistics partnership network WCA, COGISTICS Transportation has access to more than 12,000 freight forwarding offices in 196 countries worldwide. Ready to up your expedited game? Get in touch with us today to learn more.
