Dive Brief:
- Pitney Bowes has unveiled a platform for e-commerce businesses to strengthen their shipping operations, according to a Sept. 23 news release.
- The ShipAccel platform integrates with a variety of national and regional carriers, offering discounted rates from the likes of UPS, FedEx and the U.S. Postal Service. It also connects to e-commerce marketplaces such as Amazon, Shopify and eBay.
- Through the platform, companies can evaluate carrier performance and reliability, compare shipping rates, print labels for e-commerce orders and create branded tracking and returns, among other features.
Dive Insight:
Despite the demise of its Global Ecommerce unit, Pitney Bowes still has a presence in the shipping industry, particularly when it comes to software.
ShipAccel is built on the same foundation as the company's Shipping 360 platform, which is geared toward office shippers. However, the new platform features offerings that cater to the more varied range of shipments handled by e-commerce businesses.
"There is a huge differentiation between the value that an office shipper needs versus the e-commerce shipper, who is sending different sizes and different weights of packages to different ZIP codes," said Gitika Jain, Pitney Bowes’ VP of product management, in an interview with Supply Chain Dive.
Pitney Bowes is entering a crowded field of e-commerce shipping software providers, however, with delivery giant FedEx even entering the fray with its fdx platform. Jain said ShipAccel's key competitive differentiator is how the platform can easily adjust its capabilities as a user's business grows.
"We can serve the needs of a small e-commerce shipper who is shipping 50 packages, and if tomorrow he grows into somebody who is shipping more than 3,000 packages, he doesn't need to come off our solution," Jain said.
Small- and medium-sized businesses can access ShipAccel via a self-serve user interface for easy integration and onboarding, according to Pitney Bowes. Larger, high-volume shippers with more complex operations can integrate ShipAccel directly via a set of APIs or through configuration assistance from Pitney Bowes.
As Pitney Bowes looks to grow interest in ShipAccel, it plans to roll out new features such as cartonization. This will help shippers determine the best way to arrange a group of packages for shipping, Jain said.
