Routing guides contain routing instructions and establish guidelines and requirements when fulfilling orders and shipping products or materials to a specific location. The routing guide is the foundation of transportation management. It creates a streamlined process for inbound shipment delivery. As a vendor routing guides become a challenge to fulfill and distribute your product because every retailer you work with may have a different routing guideline. Partnering with an experienced 3PL warehouse can remove your routing guide compliance burden.
Routing Guide Benefits
Although routing guides can be a pain for vendors, they come with a lot of benefits. Complying with routing guides can reduce costs like processing damaged products and saves time when the operations staff doesn’t have to figure out a shipment with missing paperwork. Routing guides:
- Define relevant shipping information like rates, modes, service
- Transforms the supply chain from static to dynamic
- Measures compliance and chargebacks
- Develops efficiencies
What are Chargebacks?
When the routing guide is not followed exactly – the shipment’s receiver can charge a fee for non-compliance. Common reasons for chargebacks include:
- Late/missing/ invalid ASN
- Missing/inaccurate/ or defective labels
- Missing/inaccurate/ or defective ticketing
- Order fill rate
- Late or early shipment
Make Routing Guides Work for You
Routing guides aren’t going anywhere. As a vendor, you’re either going to have to invest in resources in personnel and systems to ship in accordance with routing guides or outsource to a third party logistics firm who is familiar with routing guides. 3PLs specialize in the fulfillment and distribution needs of all kinds of vendors and as a result, are very familiar with routing guide requirements for a large number of retailers.
Vendors who partner with 3PLs leverage the knowledge and capabilities of their 3PL to sell to a larger pool of retailers. They avoid the costly chargebacks with routing guide non-compliance and take advantage of 3PL packing, labeling, and stocking resources.
When you outsource your warehouse with an experienced 3PL, you expand your fulfillment capabilities allowing you to expand your sales.
Omaha 3PL Warehouse
We’re a centrally located 3PL warehouse. If you like the idea of removing your routing guide burden and creating more retail sales opportunities give us a call today. We’d love to tell you what we can do for you. (402) 991-8460
