How Shipium's Cloud Labeling Helps Enterprises Modernize Execution

For many high-volume shippers considering moving their technology to the cloud, concerns about label throughput become a sticking point. In some cases, this can lead shippers to stick with legacy on-premise systems, fearing that moving to the cloud will introduce latency or limit their capacity.

In this post, we’ll explore how Shipium’s cloud-native Label Engine ensures that you can create, customize, and apply labels with ease, while scaling to meet enterprise performance standards using our modern cloud architecture.

Understanding the Value of Shipium’s Labeling

Shipium’s Label Engine is a centralized interface designed to manage and scale all aspects of labeling, offering the following benefits:

• Ensure Label Throughput: Maintain rapid label printing to support enterprise-level throughput, regardless of carrier API performance (more on this below).
• Streamline Complex Workflows: Automate and simplify complex processes with bulk API requests for rate shopping and label generation.
• Customize Labels to Unique Needs: Easily adapt labels to fit your specific business requirements, whether you're a 3PL needing to add a tenant's logo or you require special properties for perishable goods.

Why Throughput Isn’t the Issue

As mentioned above, one of the biggest objections to cloud-based labeling comes down to the concern that moving label printing off-site will bottleneck the warehouse. 

Here is the reality.

Label Throughput is Almost Never the Real Bottleneck

As an enterprise shipper, your true capacity limits are in human and mechanical processes: the time it takes for a pack operator to scan an item, the speed of your conveyor belt, or the efficiency of your sorting and manifesting process.

As shown in the shipping workflow below, Label Creation & Printing is where shippers think the bottleneck is, but the real constraints are in Package Scan & Weigh, Rating & Carrier Selection, and Sorting & Manifesting.

The Proof is in the Metrics: Cloud Capacity Significantly Outpaces Demand

Let’s say a cloud-based platform offers an average label response time of 800ms on average. This type of speed, spread across 3 fulfillment centers with 30 label printers each, operating 5 days a week, for 12 hours a day, offers the following capacity:

With over a billion labels of capacity per year, a cloud platform like Shipium ensures label generation is not your limiting factor.

Shipium Solution Highlights: Control, Reliability, and Customization

Shipium's cloud architecture provides resilience and flexibility that on-premise systems simply can't match.

Control and Customization

• Extensive Carrier and Label Configuration: Manage service methods, surcharges, FC mapping, and label settings from one centralized platform.
• Custom Label Augmentations: Gain granular control by customizing the ZPL code to change the layout, add logos (Multi-Tenant Customizations), or embed custom data to meet your exact brand and operational specifications.
• Advanced Label Properties: Easily specify special handling instructions — like required signature, Saturday delivery, or perishable goods — directly on labels.
• Labels Without Costing: Print labels without providing confidential costing information, ideal when working with certain tenants or partners.

Built-in Scalability and Resilience

• Bulk Label Generation: Use consolidated API requests to create (or void) labels for multiple shipments at once to handle massive bursts in demand (like Peak Season).
• Advance Label Creation: Generate labels up to 60 days in advance and rate shop up to 14 days ahead to optimize planning.
• Label Failover: Maintain business continuity even when carrier APIs are slow or unavailable. Because Shipium’s infrastructure operates independently of these APIs, our system continues printing operations, then syncs changes when the carrier is back online.
• Cloud Advantages: Shippers also benefit from elastic scaling to handle growing volume, zero-downtime deployments, and continuous updates to ensure consistent uptime. Together, these benefits offer lower, more predictable total cost of ownership (TCO) than managing aging infrastructure yourself.

The Strategic Advantage: Pairing Labeling with Rating

The true power of Shipium lies in connecting the execution of labeling with advanced rate shopping and carrier selection capabilities. 

Unlike legacy systems, Shipium’s Rating Engine uses ML-powered rate shopping to optimize carrier and service selection, ensuring every label you print is the fastest, most cost-effective choice.

The rating process in Shipium is comprised of the following steps.

1. Eligibility Check

The selection process begins by validating package specifications to instantly rule out services that are unable to handle the shipment. This initial scrub ensures that only viable options proceed.

• Eligible carriers and services are identified based on details like the presence of hazardous materials.
• Geographic limitations based on the delivery ZIP code or service zones are applied.
• Specialized service requirements, such as those for APO or P.O. Boxes, are checked against USPS rules.

2. Date Shop

Next, the engine uses your promised delivery date and our modeled transit time as a filter, aligning shipping speed with customer expectations.

• You can enforce a specific delivery date (the customer promise), which tells the system to only compare carriers that can meet that timeline.
• Alternatively, selection can be based on Business Days of Transit (BDOT), taking into account the operating days of the origin fulfillment center (FC).

3. Rate Shop

Once those constraints are established, Shipium rate shops across the remaining eligible carriers. This is not a simple comparison of list prices; Shipium calculates the fully-loaded cost for maximum accuracy.

• Shipium’s Rating Engine accounts for your business rules — for example, always prioritizing delivery speed over cost reduction.
• Shipium’s rates account for contracted discounts, surcharges, and accessorials for more accurate cost comparison across carriers.
• Support for rate shopping without label creation is available as-needed (e.g., for pre-order quoting).

4. Volume Balancing

To help shippers meet contractual commitments, the platform also monitors volume allocation. This is an ongoing process designed to prevent penalties.

• Volume allocation is monitored on an hourly basis.
• Our model predicts the day’s volume based on trends and ongoing changes.
• Virtual cost modifiers prevent over or underutilization of carriers by “adjusting” costs — for example, raising the cost of a carrier receiving too much volume to divert selection to other carriers.
• These modifiers are purely used to dictate allocation decisions, and have no bearing on actual costs.

Once this intelligent selection process is complete, the platform provides a compliant label for execution, as detailed above.

Wrapping Up

Cloud-based platforms like Shipium don’t just meet enterprise standards for label throughput — they’re more scalable, reliable, and easier to administer and manage than their on-premise counterparts.

If modernizing your shipping technology is a priority, reach out to our team here.