Enveyo and Deposco: 3PL Shipping and Billing Without Friction

Running a distribution center used to be straightforward.

Pull product, stage pallets, load trucks.

It was even easier for more 3PLs.

As little as 10 years ago, a 3PL’s primary job was off-site, on-demand warehouse for a company’s owned warehouses. Flex during the off-season while you are manufacturing, and get out of it during peak when you sell down.

Rinse, repeat.

3PLs are taking over increasing parts of brand supply chains. Many brands have decided they are either too small for dedicated warehouses or that it takes focus off their core business. Instead of storage, the 3PL is now expected to BE the supply chain. That includes being the first point of receipt, the inventory of record, and processing all orders from eaches to truck loads as one seamless process.

As much as 70% of the volume Deposco processes – owned and 3PL alike – is parcel rather than truckload.

Increasing the pain, much of this business is from emerging or cyclical brands. Higher inventory turns, fewer standing pallets, and wider SKU variety. This adds operational complexity for the team while seeing higher numbers of tenants per facility versus the off-site model. It affects everything from the floor configuration to racking to processing. Any white-glove 3PL services drive even more situational nuance.

That’s before needing to sync with all of the client’s other systems, from marketplaces, to financial systems, to third-party processing like FBA.

This doesn’t just change the needs of the warehouse management system and order management system (WMS / OMS). It also means that the 3PL shipping and billing processes are much more complex than pallets processed and beginning and end of month (BOM / EOM) locations occupied.

What’s a 3PL to do when the industry is also experiencing a race to the bottom on pricing and the resulting razor-thin margins?

Learn how you can manage 3PL shipping and billing processes seamlessly with Enveyo and Deposco.

Business development and sales teams identify a mutually beneficial partnership through value-added offerings, cost-saving opportunities, and operational strategies that will help the client scale. However, not all clients yield the same margin. It’s critical to identify profitable opportunities prior to onboarding. Old RFQ processes produce blind estimates. Sales enablement modeling is the path to clarity.

3PL sales enablement modeling leverages robust, comparative data analysis that aids your teams to identify profitable opportunities. Enveyo’s Modeling software expedites prospect negotiations by modeling the customer’s actual shipping data against the 3PL’s negotiated rate structure. Proactively identify areas of cost savings for the client and profit margin for you. Empower the sales team to confidently illustrate your value to the client.

Alternatively, show an e-commerce prospect is not a good fit for your business due to high operating costs and low margin expectations. Don’t capture business that will hurt the bottom line.

Most importantly, efficient sales enablement models are only as actionable as your data. Too many 3PLs are limited by legacy systems and inaccurate, siloed logistics data. Enveyo’s platform is purpose-built for 3PLs and can ingest any volume of data, from any system or carrier, in any format, giving your team complete, accurate, and actionable insights exactly when you need them.

Keep your team’s focus on long-term success over short-term guesses.

It’s not enough to model effectively. You need confidence in the processing of every order. Doesn’t matter if it’s pallet in, pallet out or each picks with a high-pedigree, full unboxing experience – you committed to it; the customer expects it.

Legacy WMS solutions weren’t built to handle this. Many of them are evolutions of inventory management systems with light processing features. The focus was on accounting accuracy and moving things between spreadsheets with interfaces. Transactional processing, the kind that powers high-velocity ecommerce, looks at activity through the system as a sequence of actions to be taken, not inventory to track and manipulate.

By codifying the processing rules by tenant, by order type, Deposco makes complicated flows simple. Rules-based processing ensures that not only do you remove decision points for your floor team, but you also respond consistently to sets of conditions. No more struggling to remember unique features of every contract – and getting dinged for non-compliance. Speed up onboarding while defending employee morale.

All of this ultimately passes through to the 3PL billing itself.

There is no one-size-fits-all all; everyone wants their own rules they will (and will not) pay for. You need the flexibility to take on business – regardless of the details. Otherwise, you build a system of manual audits, reviews, reconciliations, and ultimately, lost profit. It’s why Deposco provides this out of the box. Just like your tenants aren’t logisticians, you didn’t want to be their accountant. Load the contract rules, let the system track it, and get back to work.

Finally, track it in Performance.

Not all business is good business and being able to consider the true cost to serve in portfolio review is essential in protecting your margins – and by extension of your brand value.

How long does it take your accounts payable to generate each invoice with warehousing, fulfillment, transportation, and other charges?

Is your pricing model for parcel transportation charges a markup of your cost, a discount off published rates, or a combination of the two? And is a key component of your monetization applying it correctly?

Odds are, your process to generate invoices is time-consuming and error-prone, creating a substandard order-to-cash cycle, leading to extended billing periods, reduction in cash flow, and erosion of margin.

3PLs that leverage Deposco and Enveyo for carrier invoice analysis and variable margin application, streamline this complex and error-prone process, while optimizing customer costs and maximizing profitability.

By leveraging a white-labeled, customer-facing portal, 3PLs become a technology provider through Enveyo’s solutions. Clients have real-time access to comprehensive details behind their parcel charges. The 3PL sees shipping performance across the entire operation, increasing efficiency and long-term competitive advantage. Enable customers access to robust data, reporting, and analytics on:

Steve Syverson, Senior Director of E-Commerce at NFI Industries, a customer of both Deposco and Enveyo states:

“I’m always looking to add value to our customers, bring something they haven’t seen before in the space, something that will help them grow their business and be more efficient. Enveyo was the perfect selection for that.”

Holistic billing solutions with Deposco and Enveyo is a complete view of activities in storage, processing, shipping, transportation, and accounting, ensuring you charge for the right services and are paid in kind – with minimal friction.

Did you know that approximately 80% of carrier invoices have at least one discrepancy?

Parcel auditing is a vital tool for 3PLs to optimize their shipping expenditures and enhance carrier accountability.

If your team is performing these parcel audits manually or partnering with a third-party parcel auditor who promises to save you 20-40% in parcel spend, know there is a better way!

Enveyo’s Audit solution automates issue identification, claims submission, and recovery to eliminate costly mistakes and uncover hidden savings. Deploy comprehensive monitoring of carrier invoices that compares individual shipments against contracted carrier rates, services, and associated delivery commitments to identify discrepancies and recover revenue.

Deploying data-driven technology in house ensures there’s an unblinking eye on your parcel spend. Reduce employee intervention, stop hemorrhaging money, and catch overspend and unnecessary fees.

You don’t know what you don’t know.

How much money is being lost to poor contracts, inefficient margin application and billing, and slow, manual recovery?

The answer lies somewhere between an uncomfortable amount and catastrophic. Luckily, there are technology solutions focused on ensuring that you know the exact amounts. While an ounce of prevention can beat a pound of cure, trust but verify ensures even the little that slips through is found and recovered.

Consider the power of Deposco to enhance the inside of the facility and ensure your ecommerce is not just flowing smoothly, but it’s being done with the highest level of cost controls and contract adherence.

Layer on the power of Enveyo to ensure that you are bringing the right customers to that facility, their business is being given the best rates, you’re applying margin accurately, and the shipments you process are being held to the highest degree of scrutiny when the bills come in.

In the same way you’re trying to deliver high quality service to your customers, ensure that every one of those services is profitable and sustainable.