In today’s competitive retail landscape, efficient order fulfillment and seamless customer experiences are critical for success. One platform that excels in combining these aspects is Shipedge WMS, a cutting-edge warehouse management solution. This article will present definitions of best-rate and omnichannel shipping and discover how Shipedge’s WMS leverages these tools to deliver top-notch performance in order fulfillment and customer satisfaction.

What is best-rate shipping?

Best-rate shipping refers to the most cost-effective and efficient shipping option available for a particular shipment, taking into consideration various factors such as:

• Package size
• Weight
• Destination
• Delivery timeline

It involves identifying and selecting the shipping carrier or method that offers the best balance between cost and service level to minimize shipping expenses while meeting customer expectations for timely and reliable delivery. Best-rate shipping is a crucial consideration for businesses that rely on shipping as part of their supply chain or e-commerce operations, as it can significantly impact profitability and customer satisfaction.

Best-rate shipping is a feature provided by Shipedge to our users. What it does is it looks at all the shipping carriers, such as FedEx and DHL, and finds the most affordable way to ship a package based on these different shipping solutions.

For example:

If you want to send a package that costs $5 with UPS and $6 with FedEx, Shipedge will choose UPS

This seems easy enough to do on your own, but when you’re shipping high volumes of orders to many different places across the nation or across the world, the process becomes complicated quickly.

By utilizing the best rate shipping module, you can reduce the time spent finding the best shipping option for every individual order. Automating shipping for your brand can greatly benefit your company when executed well. Find out more about these advantages below:

What are the main benefits of best-rate shipping?

Some of the most common advantages of implementing best-rate-shipping on your business are:

• Reduce shipping expenses: Implementing automated best rate shipping enables you to set up combinations of carrier service levels based on one or more rules, ensuring that packages are shipped at the lowest possible cost.
• Diversify carrier strategy: With 2-day shipping becoming the new norm set by Amazon, using rate shopping rules allows you to offer a variety of carriers and service levels to meet customer expectations.
• Improve competitiveness: Offering competitive shipping rates can give the business a competitive advantage, as customers often compare shipping costs when purchasing. Having affordable shipping options can attract more customers and help retain existing ones.
• Maximize flexibility and scalability: Best-rate shipping allows businesses to choose from various shipping carriers and methods, providing flexibility and scalability as their shipping needs change. This can be especially beneficial for growing businesses that need to adapt to evolving customer demands and changing market conditions.
• Capability to Streamline Operations: Implementing a best-rate shipping strategy can help businesses streamline their shipping operations by optimizing shipping processes, reducing errors, and improving overall efficiency. This can result in time and labor savings and improved operational productivity.

Any business that deals directly with order deliveries should focus on providing the best route to their customers and choosing the most effective channel. In the following section, we’ll present how omnichannel strategies can benefit from rate shopping different shipping carriers.

What is omnichannel?

Omnichannel is a retail strategy that aims to provide customers with a seamless and integrated shopping experience across multiple online and offline channels. This includes various touchpoints such as:

• Brick-and-mortar stores
• Online marketplaces
• Mobile apps
• Social media

Omnichannel retail aims to create a unified and consistent brand experience for customers, regardless of the channel they use to interact with the retailer. By using an omnichannel approach, customers can use multiple channels interchangeably to shop and interact with a retailer.

For example

A customer may start browsing products on a retailer’s website, visit a physical store to try out products, and finally purchase through a mobile app

omnichannel Customer Journey

The key is to provide a seamless and consistent experience where customer information, preferences, and purchase history are integrated across channels, allowing for a personalized and convenient shopping experience. Implementing an omnichannel strategy requires retailers to have robust technology and systems to enable seamless data integration, inventory management, order fulfillment, and customer engagement across channels.

READ MORE: Maximize your inventory management with real-time inventory management

What are the main benefits of an omnichannel strategy?

Implementing an omnichannel strategy can bring several benefits to brands and retailers. Some of the benefits of omnichannel include:

• Enhance customer experience: Omnichannel retail allows customers to have a seamless and consistent shopping experience across multiple channels. Customers can browse, purchase, and interact with a retailer using different media interchangeably.
• Increase sales and revenue: Omnichannel strategy can drive sales and revenue growth by expanding retailers` reach across multiple channels. Customers who prefer to shop in-store, online, or through mobile apps can have the flexibility to choose their preferred channel, leading to potential sales from different customer segments.
• Improve inventory management: Omnichannel retail requires integrated inventory management across different channels. This gives retailers to have a real-time view of inventory levels, allowing for efficient inventory allocation and replenishment. This can help prevent stockouts and overstock situations and reduce inventory carrying costs.
• Better customer insights: Omnichannel strategies often involve collecting and integrating customer data across different channels. This can provide valuable insights into customer preferences, behaviors, and purchase patterns, allowing retailers to better understand and segment their customer base.
• Give competitive advantage: In today’s competitive retail landscape, offering a seamless and consistent omnichannel shopping experience can provide a competitive advantage. It can differentiate a retailer from competitors and attract customers who value convenience and flexibility in their shopping journey.

Implementing an effective omnichannel strategy can enhance customer experience, increased sales and revenue, improved inventory management, better customer insights, increased operational efficiency, and a competitive advantage for brands and retailers. Know in the following topic how omnichannel could be combined with best-rate shipping to improve the performance of your business.

How can best-rate shipping and omnichannel be combined to improve business performance?

The connection between omnichannel and best-rate shipping lies in the pursuit of providing seamless and efficient customer experiences in the realm of e-commerce and order fulfillment. 

Omnichannel retail strategies:

Aim to integrate multiple sales channels, such as online and offline, to provide a unified shopping experience for customers.

Best-rate shipping:

 Focuses on identifying and selecting the most cost-effective and efficient shipping options.

By implementing best-rate shipping solutions, businesses can optimize their shipping processes across various sales channels, including online marketplaces, brick-and-mortar stores, and more. This can help ensure that customers receive their orders in a timely and cost-effectively, regardless of the channel they use to make their purchases.

In an omnichannel retail environment, where customers expect seamless and consistent experiences across different channels, a robust best-rate shipping strategy can be crucial. It allows businesses to meet customer expectations for reliable and affordable shipping, regardless of the channel used for order placement. This can increase customer satisfaction, repeat business, and overall operational efficiency.

How Shipedge combines the aspects of omnichannel and best-rate shipping for a superior customer experience and allows distribution centers/warehouses to fulfill orders

Shipedge is a cutting-edge order fulfillment platform that combines the aspects of omnichannel and best-rate shipping to deliver a superior customer experience and enable distribution centers/warehouses to efficiently fulfill orders. One of the critical features of Shipedge is its robust omnichannel capabilities.

The platform seamlessly integrates with various sales channels and shipping carriers to offer you and your customers a seamless order fulfillment experience.

Shipedge also offers advanced order routing capabilities that optimize shipping methods and carrier selection to achieve the best-rate shipping options. The platform evaluates multiple shipping carriers, rates, and transit times in real-time, considering factors such as order destination, weight, size, and customer preferences. This allows distribution centers/warehouses to select the most cost-effective and efficient shipping method for each order, reducing shipping costs and faster delivery times.

READ MORE: Warehouse Management System: A starting guide

Furthermore, Shipedge provides comprehensive inventory management features that allow distribution centers/warehouses to efficiently manage inventory across multiple channels. This includes real-time visibility of inventory levels, automated inventory replenishment, and inventory allocation based on order source and priority. This ensures that the right products are available at the right time to fulfill orders, reducing stockouts and overstock situations.

By combining the aspects of omnichannel and best-rate shipping, Shipedge empowers distribution centers/warehouses to fulfill orders with

• Efficiency
• Accuracy
• Cost-effectiveness

They result in a superior customer experience. Customers receive a seamless shopping experience across multiple channels, with optimized shipping options for faster delivery times, and retailers benefit from increased operational efficiency and reduce shipping costs. If you’re looking for the perfect combination for your online business, with the benefits of the best shipping rate, Shipedge WMS can offer you the best solution. Discover everything you need to know by contacting one of our specialists today.