8 Ways Northeast3PL says “Yes!” with Shipworks
Managing hundreds of clients varying from medical device suppliers to booksellers, Northeast3PL in Londonderry, New Hampshire spins a lot of plates. How do they keep their many clients happy while also staying on time and on budget?
Vic Capozzi, President at Northeast3PL, sat down with us to share how this third-party logistics provider processes thousands of packages a day with ShipWorks.
Secret to Success #1: You Don’t Need a Niche
“Our clients are truly diverse. Not having a niche is how we have been successful. If we did have a niche though, it is customization. There are a lot of fulfillment houses that are very rigid with their requirements for their clients. We are unique because we tailor to our clients needs. Our niche is to almost never say no.”
Secret to Success #2: Be Adaptable
“We have found that we have gained business from clients that need more flexibility than our competitors are willing to provide. Regardless of the market and the vertical, our claim to fame is our flexibility. We have clients whose product is in high demand immediately out of the gate as well as those that are startups. We can adapt to serve both the clients with established product lines, and those that are getting started.”
Secret to Success #3: Reduce Man Hours
As costs increase, focusing on improved efficiencies is essential. As part of our effort to maximize efficiencies, we examined the software we were using to ship our products. The time savings we gained by moving to ShipWorks from our previous software resulted in our ability to reduce man hours because we were able to centrally configure Shipping Profiles and Rules within the ShipWorks system. We were able to achieve three times the output, allowing our business to grow without increasing headcount.
Secret to Success #4: Accessible Shipping Stations
“We now have multiple workstations dispersed throughout the warehouse that are all configured to use ShipWorks. In the past, we had separate shipping stations – each dedicated to specific carriers – which created bottlenecks. Also, each carrier had its own process that operators had to learn. With Shipworks, regardless of the carrier, there is only one process. Now every warehouse associate can pick, pack, and ship. Everyone here is trained to use ShipWorks.”
Secret to Success #5: Say Yes
“The ability to create customized shipping profiles for each client is critical for us because each of our clients is unique. Because their needs are all different, the fact that ShipWorks supports customization allows us to better serve our clients.
One example of a custom request we received from a client was to automate the printing of 2,700 return labels. Our shipping orders feed into ShipWorks via an ODBC connection between our order management system and ShipWorks. If a single return shipping label is required, we simply log into ShipWorks and follow the Ship Again as a return process.
However, when we had to create 2,700 return labels in one day, we realized we needed a more automated process. ShipWorks Customer Support was able to create a routine for us that automatically generated the orders in ShipWorks and printed out each unique return label. All we needed to do was upload a CSV file containing the data for the shipments and ShipWorks did the rest. It took less than 2 hours to generate and print the labels. If we had to manually process each label, it would have taken 20 hours. Although we only used this feature a few times, we know if we need the utility again, it’s in place.”
Secret to Success #6: Ask for Help
“One time we needed to create nearly 3,000 shipping labels in a couple of hours. Again, we knew we needed to automate the process, but we didn’t know how to go about it. Of course, it was at the last minute, at the end of the week, and it needed to be done right away. We called customer support and the rep stayed with us for hours to help get this configured so that on Monday morning we were able to produce these shipping labels en mass.
We made an important client very happy because we were able to meet their need, which was to output a large number of orders in a short amount of time. We were able to do that because of the dedication of the customer support team at ShipWorks.
Secret to Success #7: Use Scan-to-Ship
Within ShipWorks, there’s a process called Scan-to-Ship. When properly configured, all the warehouse associate needs to do is scan the bar code and hit print. When they scan that bar code, everything populates – the ship-to address and all the product information. The shipping label prints out in less than a second. It’s that simple.
Secret to Success #8: Combine and Conquer
We asked Northeast3PL to imagine what it would mean to them if they did not have ShipWorks. “We are able to achieve three times the output by utilizing ShipWorks. Without ShipWorks, our costs would increase significantly. We have four main carriers, so we would have to maintain the software updates for each one, and we would need to train everyone on each carrier. The ability to customize ShipWorks according to our client’s needs allows us to provide our clients a level of service which is unique in the industry.”