Making Parcel Shipments work in OTM
In the last decade, the emergence of e-commerce coupled with the rise in smaller and more frequent orders has made parcel shipping operations one of the key functions of transportation management.
Parcel shipment operations pose unique challenges, such as:
· Large volume of transactions – a major operational constraint
· Diverse rate structures and negotiated discounts for each customer, which periodically change based on weekly parcel freight
· Multiple service levels and packaging codes
· Carriers generally send a single weekly consolidated invoice. In some cases this invoice can contain details of tens of thousands of shipments
Due to these unique characteristics of the Express Industry, execution of parcel shipments was typically not considered as one of the core functions of a Transportation Management System (TMS).
Since Parcel Freight Bill Rating and Auditing was not handled within the TMS, these functions were either manually managed by shipper’s in-house personnel or outsourced to 3rd party service providers like National Traffic Service, Franklin Traffic Service etc., thereby incurring extra cost for the shippers.
Oracle Transportation Management (OTM) which delivers robust transportation planning and execution capabilities to shippers and third party logistics providers can be integrated with 3rd party solutions like Kewill FlagshipTM to support parcel rating and freight settlement for major express parcel carriers such as United Parcel Service (UPS), FedEx etc. Such integrations call for an extra license overhead for the OTM customer.
Infosys Technologies has developed a ‘ready to deploy’ solution to integrate OTM with UPS OnLine® Tools for parcel rating and freight settlement. This solution can be used by shippers who use OTM for transportation management and have outsourced their express parcel shipment execution to UPS. It facilitates:
. Small parcel rating as per negotiated rates, service levels and packaging code
. Matching UPS weekly consolidated invoices to source shipments in TMS for better freight spends visibility
. Integrating UPS invoices to E-Business Suite(EBS) Payables for freight reconciliation
It helps in streamlining all aspects of transportation management for parcel shipments on a single TMS application at no additional license overhead. This solution can be built using existing OTM tools as well as UPS provided web tools which are provided to their customers free of charge
Shippers can now economize their supply chain cost by eliminating 3rd party service providers or freeing up internal personnel time for more value adding activities. They can leverage this solution to dispense with cumbersome maintenance of customer negotiated rates, enhance visibility of UPS invoices to related shipments and automation of freight settlement and audit processes.
