The 4 Categories to Calculate ROI 2. Orders and Shipping Orders Orders and shipping serve as a core component of 3PL warehousing services, with many brands choosing to use 3PL warehouses specifically for their shipping acumen. However, without a WMS, the need to manually enter order details, shipping addresses, and tracking numbers reduces efficiency and increases costs. Manual order entry represents a costly expense for many paper-based 3PL warehouses. In most cases, a WMS removes manual order entry with electronic order entry through integrations like electronic data interchange (EDI), application programming interface (API), and online shopping carts and marketplaces. With ecommerce expected to reach $502.5 billion in 2022, automating ecommerce fulfillment with integrations—especially REST API and shopping cart integrations—is essential to staying abreast of the competition by ensuring accurate and fast order entry. Without these integrations, manual order entry becomes a full-time job for warehouse employees, taking up valuable time that they could spend picking and packing orders for shipment. Shipping Shipping costs and rate shopping comprise a material portion of time and expense for 3PL warehouses. By utilizing WMS software with shipping carrier integrations, warehouses can eliminate manual ship-to re-entry and rate shopping. With an integrated system, the software automatically populates lowest cost and/or fastest shipping information from the orders already in the system. With automated shipping carrier integrations, warehouse workers eliminate wasted time researching the best shipping rates and can save with pre- negotiated rates at the press of a button. Questions to ask: • How many hours a day/month are spent on order entry or manual data entry? • How many order and shipping errors get reported monthly? • How much time does it cost to address order and shipping entry errors? • What is the average cost of order and shipping entry errors? • How many hours will order and shipping entry take once implementing a WMS? extensiv.com | 833.983.6748 7