Visibility and Scalability: How Your Business Can Save Money on Shipping You can increase clarity on shipping processes across departments and save money at the same time.

As companies grow, scale, and add more departments, it becomes increasingly important for managers to keep a close eye on all operations, processes, and costs. As these new departments begin to take care of their own shipping and mailing costs, companies run the risk of overspending when oversight becomes inconsistent.

If organizations cannot maintain visibility across departments, shipping and mailing operations may be impeded by disorganization, resulting in a loss of both time and money.

Luckily, it isn't impossible for companies to maintain visibility with shipping and mailing costs across departments. With solutions such as SendPro® Enterprise from Pitney Bowes, organizations can take simple and complex shipping operations to the next level by refining cost management, efficiency, and compliance processes.

"There's a great opportunity to scale with SendPro. It allows you to look at the entire organization from anywhere, and it doesn't force managers to be so myopic to just one portion of the organization," says Tom Hazel, Vice President for Carrier Solutions at Pitney Bowes.

Here are ways SendPro Enterprise can assist growing companies with visibility across the entire organization for their shipping and mailing solutions as they scale at pace.

Ability to leverage spending and rate shopping.

Businesses often look at shipping and mailing prices simply as "the cost of doing business," Hazel says. This isn't necessarily the case, though. "As a business, you are a consumer to those carriers (e.g., FedEx, UPS, etc.). You have the ability as a consumer to negotiate your expenses and leverage that spend with those carriers."

SendPro Enterprise is a multi-carrier solution, users are able to compare rates across carriers to determine if they are fully leveraging their spend on available discounts and rates. SendPro Enterprise users can utilize the Smart Shop feature within the application based upon delivery objectives to get the least cost alternative every time they ship. For example, the average commercial-based savings with the USPS through SendPro Enterprise is 25 percent over retail price.

In addition to rate shopping, SendPro Enterprise can also assist companies in reducing costs on address correction fees. According to Pitney Bowes, 22 percent of a company's shipments incur address correction fees, which occurs when the carrier must complete or correct an address in order to finish the delivery process. With SendPro Enterprise, the software validates address information before a package or parcel even leaves the office, saving users both time and unnecessary spend.

Low IT footprint and remote capabilities.

Since SendPro Enterprise is a SaaS (software-as-a-service) solution, it requires very little IT involvement. "From a scalability standpoint, your IT team will not have to spend a lot of time integrating or managing the solution. It also can be accessed from any PC, which allows for companies to make the most of remote operations and work from home users," Hazel explains.

That means users can free their IT department from unnecessary costs and software management. And with both standard and private cloud solutions, users will be able to run their organizations efficiently while keeping teams in contact, no matter where they are.

With its low IT impact and remote capabilities, managers can increase their visibility of how, when, and at what cost teams are shipping from their office or home locations. SendPro Enterprise also eliminates the need for companies to use physical postage meters. Through the application, SendPro Enterprise users can print stamps and shipping labels on-demand right in their work-from-home setup. For organizations that send mail using Certified Return Receipt with the USPS, SendPro Enterprise can automate that as well. Utilizing electronic return receipt will allow your organization to take advantage of even more savings at $1.10 per letter and standardize your workflow.

"It's the same application, whether you're in the office or at home, so it doesn't necessitate re-education and it's the same interface no matter the carrier, so it allows for quicker adaptability and mobility within your organization," Hazel says.

Accountability for spending across the organization.

SendPro Enterprise not only allows users to complete transactions within the application, but it also keeps track of spend across the entire organization. "If an employee ships something, managers can view when they shipped the package, to whom they sent the package, and how much that transaction cost," Hazel explains. "Managers are able to view the entire process to maintain accountability for how employees carry out shipping and mailing operations."

The platform automates accounting to remove the complexity and risk by capturing all costs with a single tool. With this open accountability, managers can discern where employees may be either taking advantage of the system or not operating the system for its intended purposes. In turn, managers can make informed decisions on how to optimize operations so that spending can remain under control.

Click here to learn more about how SendPro Enterprise can help your business save time and money on shipping.