— Shawn Compton, VP of Transportation at DCL Logistics
Business Challenge
As the importance of fast, affordable, consistent, and compliant shipping has increased for hyper-growth brands, so have the complexities of managing it. DCL Logistics, a leading fulfillment partner for many of the world’s fastest-growing and most recognizable brands, needed a solution to enhance its shipping operations and meet evolving customer needs.
As with many high-quality fulfillment and logistics providers, DCL’s previous shipping system was limited, with the following paint points:
- Regulatory Readiness — DCL’s previous system was simply a conduit for information, requiring manual attention to carrier regulatory compliance. As a provider tenured in handling goods with rigorous quality and compliance needs, DCL spent ample time addressing these complexities, leading to delays to the end-customer.
- Carrier Flexibility — Carrier innovation and service options have grown and customer preferences are more nuanced than ever. But the configurability of shipping decisions per customer was limited to slow adoption timelines to onboard new carriers.
- Network Volatility — With transportation labor strikes, government policy changes, inflation, increased extreme weather systems, and more macro conditions to manage, DCL needed a shipping system that could provide quick flexibility and intelligent automation to ensure customer service wasn’t disrupted.
Solution
DCL turned to Shipium to modernize and centralize their shipping operations. Shipium’s tech-first platform combined with best-in-class support gives DCL’s transportation team the support needed to meet the increased demands of their hyper-growth customers.
Regulatory Readiness
- Shipium solves many complexities necessary for carrier compliance. All regulatory elements available within their pre-integrated carrier network are certified and compliant.
- DCL now has a higher percentage of accurate shipping labels, due to the platform’s automation of compliant, dynamic carrier assignment. With fewer packages experiencing delays, DCL is now providing a more seamless experience for customers.
- Ecommerce continues to expand at a rapid rate, and DCL’s adherence to quality control and regulatory compliance gives them greater agility to meet the needs of brands shipping cross-border shipping as well as domestic.
Carrier Flexibility
- DCL immediately expanded carrier availability to those available in Shipium’s pre-integrated network, consisting of all major national, regional, and alternative carriers.
- By giving DCL’s highly experienced transportation team a richer set of tools, DCL has been able to simplify their service offerings for customers while simultaneously customizing options to fit their business needs.
- Now brands choose the delivery expectations, untethered from a single carrier model, and the DCL team uses Shipium’s intelligent selection process to ensure a perfect service match based on the desired outcome. The results are happier brands, because optimal service-level options are matched on the back end.
Network Volatility
- Shipium’s pre-integrated carrier network provides access to new carriers and services that can be turned on (or off) in a manner of hours, which has strengthened DCL’s ability to quickly mitigate risk and service disruptions for their customers.
- Shipium’s console provides many code-free workflows empowering DCL’s experienced team to quickly make changes, like tweaking business rules, that can take immediate effect across the network.
- Shipium’s Machine Learning models self-adjust as reality changes. For example, things like seasonality or weather disruption will impact the ML-powered Dynamic Time-in-Transit model that is used in optimized carrier decisions.
— Dave Tu, President at DCL Logistics