Direct-to-Consumer Beverage Distributor Optimizes Fulfillment Operations

Active Shipping Management Saves Beverage Distributor More than $1 Million

The executive overseeing the beverage distribution company’s parcel shipping and fulfillment operations was a veteran operations expert with significant experience in senior-level roles at well-known brands. With a keen focus on innovation, the company recently completed a significant redesign and deployment of its core operations and online ordering platform, a development that promised not only to improve the customer experience, but also to provide greater operational intelligence to various business functions throughout the enterprise.

Parcel Shipping Costs

Despite the company’s emphasis on best-in class and innovative technologies and tools, its fulfillment operation was constrained by the largely reactive approach to parcel shipping common among most organizations that do business online. More specifically, the executive was keenly aware of the problematic nature of parcel shipping: while leaders have significant visibility into other business functions, parcel shipping is an anomaly.

Not only are parcel shipping costs governed by complex web of variables in lengthy carrier contracts filled with numerous fine-print details but each shipment is in effect an ad hoc event. As result, parcel shipping is in effect the last frontier of spend optimization. Most organizations have no real time visibility over their shipping activity, let alone the ability to proactively take steps to lower their costs.  What’s more, the factors that influence parcel shipping costs – from general rate increases to zone-specific rules – are constantly changing. Highly complex, it is impossible for any one person to know how the innumerable terms and conditions will impact each and every shipment an organization makes.

Direct-to-Consumer Fulfillment Services

For the beverage distributor, this reality was particularly salient because the company provided full-service direct-to-consumer fulfillment services to its clients, beverage manufacturers. This included not only giving customers the choice of which carrier to use, but also providing them with better shipping prices than they could get on their own. The shipping mix is also diverse and includes ground and express shipments, as some beverages are sensitive to environmental conditions like temperature and must be delivered quickly.

Download this case study to see how Reveel's Shipping Intelligence™ Platform helped make significant improvements to the beverage distributors operations.