Top 11 key Features of Courier Management Software

Introduction

It’s almost like trying to solve a puzzle, where every piece needs to be fitted together to form the structure. Customer orders, route planning, order tracking, and customer updates are the different pieces of the puzzle. If one piece doesn’t fit or is ignored, the whole journey may fall apart. Managing deliveries and keeping customers informed are among the most important aspects of improving customer satisfaction.

To help businesses in such situations, a courier management system comes in. These systems are specially designed to streamline every piece of this logistics puzzle and make the process more streamlined. But, the question is, what exactly a courier management software is. 

In this article, we’ll discuss what it is and the key features of an efficient courier management system.

Let’s start!

What Is a Courier Management Software?

Courier management software is a platform that helps businesses manage their couriers and parcels throughout the entire journey — from the moment of dispatching to the moment it reaches their destination. 

Let’s break it down further. If you’re a budding business owner,  you can tie up with a single courier company who will take care of your entire customer orders. But when your business grows and order volumes surge, it adds an extra layer of complexity to your delivery operations. Managing multiple carriers, monitoring customer orders, maintaining seamless post-purchase customer experience — there is a lot to tackle! 

Exactly here, these courier management software solutions work as a savior. They automate most of the logistics tasks, so you can focus on other critical aspects of your business, say scaling marketing efforts and increasing customer satisfaction.

Top 11 Key Features of Courier Management Software

Think of courier management software as a control tower for delivery operations. It comes up with numerous functionalities to help businesses manage various aspects of their operations. Let’s look into them one by one. 

1. Multi-carrier Integration

One of the most convenient features of courier management software that makes it a must-have solution for businesses is its multi-carrier integration solution. These tools come pre-integrated with numerous carriers worldwide, making it easier for brands to go live with any courier service within seconds. All the delivery businesses you work with can be easily integrated with using these courier dispatch software.

So, if you’re a business owner who mostly deals with multiple courier partners and juggles numerous platforms to monitor your parcels, going for a courier dispatch software can be your best bet. It centralizes all information on a single dashboard and helps you manage the entire process without any hassles. This also helps you keep track of moving stock which is essential to inventory management.

2. Smart Carrier Allocation

Each carrier has its own specialty. While some are great at express deliveries, some carriers are known for reducing RTO%(Return-to-Origin). On the other hand, a few logistics partners are efficient in managing time-sensitive deliveries. A courier delivery management system is the ideal mechanism for improving operational efficiency when it comes to delivery scheduling and maintaining on-time delivery rates.

That’s why it's always better to opt for a carrier that is particularly efficient in managing specific shipments. However,  you don’t have to take extra pressure and invest time to identify the best shipping company for your parcels.  The smart carrier allocation engine offered by these courier management software tools will make the process easier for you. 

It provides a centralized dashboard,  where you can set specific parameters and predefined priorities. Based on that,  it will fetch the most suitable carrier,  so you can fulfill the shipment in the best way and improve delivery efficiency. 

3. Automated order creation

Dispatch management is an art form and a big aspect of courier management. When it comes to handling a high volume of orders, the manual order-creation process won't cut it. Not only is it time-consuming but also prone to errors. You may end up creating multiple shipping labels containing the same consignment numbers or entering the wrong information in the shipping labels. 

Thankfully, courier dispatch software put the entire order manifestation process like bulk shipping label generation, generating AWB numbers on autopilot. As a result,  you can quickly dispatch the orders and speed up the fulfillment journey, ensuring your courier operations run smoothly - another bonus of delivery management systems.

4. Optimization of delivery routes

Have you ever thought about why some businesses manage to deliver customer orders on time? Well, that's where automated route planning comes in. In essence, this route optimization feature analyzes historical data, gps tracking, considers advanced algorithms like ML and predictive analytics.

It examines real-time variables for delivery vehicles such as traffic, weather, and road closures via real time driver tracking. Based on these aspects, it identifies the most optimal delivery routes, so driver performance is enhanced by the most efficient routes. Optimized routes ensure timely delivery to the end recipient and save on fuel costs. 

5. In-depth order tracking

Real time tracking of orders is a key metric to measure the efficacy of delivery performance across your business operations. These delivery management solutions help you monitor the end-to-end shipping journey. It offers a unified portal where you’ll get real-time tracking delivery statuses of the shipments — irrespective of the number of carriers you’re dealing with and orders you’ve dispatched.

This further eliminates the hectic process of juggling carriers’ portals to get shipment updates. Instead, it saves you time and helps you track all the parcels on the go. Besides, you can also provide shoppers with a white-labeled tracking portal, so they can monitor the orders on their own. 

6. Automated customer notifications

Most of the time, these delivery management systems provide push APIs that send up-to-the-minute updates each time a shipment passes through milestones. You can use this data to send real-time tracking alerts to shoppers. 

In fact, these tools also adopt a multichannel strategy (WhatsApp, SMS, emails) to send shipment notifications to consumers. You’ll get the flexibility to customize these notifications with your brand details and customers’ local languages to grab their attention. 

7. Delivery Delays and SLA breach prediction 

Nothing disappoints a customer more than slow delivery service. But delivery delays are avoidable, as external factors like bad weather and traffic highly affect delivery times. 

The best way to cope with this situation is to offer delay alerts way before the problem actually arises. But how? Thanks to these courier management tools, they use predictive analytics to identify potential bottlenecks, like shipping delays and SLA breaches.

Then it sends automated delay notifications to them, so they can be mentally prepared for this scenario. This further improves their trust in the brand and makes your brand stand out among the crowd. 

8. Driver coordination

Most of the time, delivery management platforms come up with driver management tools and even a dedicated driver management app. As a result, they can easily coordinate with the drivers and monitor their operations. Driver performance can be tracked on a real-time basis.

For instance, it offers a centralized portal to improve driver communications. It can optimize delivery routes, automate delivery schedules based on driver availability and demands, and sends automated notifications to update about new tasks. 

9. POD handling

Those days are gone when delivery agents used to take customer signatures to confirm a delivery. This manual POD gathering process was not only time-consuming but also hard to track, leading to misplaced records.

To mitigate this issue, delivery management software offer an automated POD feature. With ePOD, delivery personnel can take electronic signatures, photos, and GPS locations as POD — all through the mobile device. Delivery proof helps assure both you and your customers of your operational efficiency.

10. Management of reverse logistics 

Returns are a nightmare for businesses! On the one hand, it leads to increased operational costs, and on the other hand, it leaves a negative impression among shoppers. While you can’t avoid returns (because they are inevitable), you can manage the whole process.

Tying up with the right courier companies lets you maintain customers’ trust by offering efficient reverse logistics. The right courier delivery software can ensure a seamless returns management process. A good courier management system will help you in this case.

They offer dynamic returns management solutions to manage the process.

11. Analytics & reporting 

If you go for a modern courier software, you’ll get in-depth insights into every aspect of the delivery journey, including:

• Carrier performance analytics

• Delivery time analytics

• NDR case reports

• Analysis of customer notifications

• NPS score analysis 

And more. 

These comprehensive analytics help you identify potential loopholes in the process and strategize the logistics journey in a better way. Courier delivery management systems focus significantly on data driven decisions, which makes analytics a core part of delivery operations.

Here’s how ClickPost makes courier management hassle-free for businesses

While you’ll find hundreds of courier management software with a simple Google search, there are only a handful of tools like ClickPost that actually deliver what they promise. 

ClickPost is an AI and data-first logistics intelligence platform that aims to be the ultimate commerce operating system in the future. With ClickPost, you can significantly improve your logistics operations and boost customers’ post-purchase experience. Wondering how?

Final Verdict!

In a situation where brands are competing with each other to grab customers’ eyeballs, having the best courier management software in your tech stack is not an option; it’s a necessity. As you saw, it has many convenient features that will not only ease your life but also provide your customers with the best shopping experience.

So, if you’re looking for courier management systems, be sure to evaluate their features one by one and then go for the tool that suits your needs and budget.