A feature of Elite EXTRA Delivery Network
Unlock access to the nation’s top third-party delivery fleets and gain the ability to deliver farther, faster, and easier, automate the delivery and notification processes, and delight customers with same-day and on-demand delivery with Elite EXTRA’s 3PL Software.
What Is 3PL Software?
3PL stands for third-party logistics. 3PL software allows you to deliver your packages using outside, third-party carriers. This eliminates the need to build and manage an in-house fleet of delivery vehicles and drivers.
Elite EXTRA’s 3PL software makes delivery cheaper and easier while increasing delivery speed and quality, so your customers get the best experience possible.
How Does 3PL Software Work?
At Elite EXTRA, we make our 3PL software simple, intuitive, and user-friendly. If anything doesn’t work for you, no need to worry, we will customize our 3PL software to meet your needs! Here’s how it works.
Connect
Integrate our 3PL software into your existing system and gain instant access to Elite EXTRA’s vast and powerful Delivery Network. Immediately start delivering with the nation’s top third-party fleets including the top local carriers where you need them and several top on-demand delivery providers like DoorDash and Uber.
Read our white paper to learn more about how our software integrates with your ERP!
Compare
View straightforward side-by-side price and delivery time comparisons to get the best option for the factors you care about most.
Automate Routing & Dispatch
When you add Elite EXTRA’s Routing & Dispatch software, you can automatically dispatch each delivery. Use business rules to tell the software which providers you prefer and which factors to prioritize.
When you automate your routing and dispatch process, you save time and money while ensuring every delivery is sent to the right driver at the provider that best meets your criteria.
This ensures you have the most optimized route possible every time, using the factors you choose, like faster delivery to VIP customers, the shortest route, or the route that matches the customer’s preferred timeslot.
Inform
Get automatic delivery updates, a mobile app for easy communication and driver tracking, and provide automatic updates and real-time tracking to your customers.
Manage
With our Delivery Network, you don’t need contracts with each 3PL provider. Simply pay, interact, and track with our 3PL software. Plus, powerful analytics allow you to make data-driven decisions.
Top Logistics Challenges
Retail and eCommerce aren’t easy. Retailers face numerous logistics challenges that they must be able to address to have a successful business.
Logistics Complexity
There are so many different steps that need to be completed in the most efficient manner. Who has the cheapest delivery price? Who is the fastest?
Should you use local carriers in the delivery area or several nationwide carriers to avoid having dozens of providers and contracts? How can you figure out the best provider and find the most efficient route every time?
Labor Shortages
There just aren’t enough people for the jobs that need to be done. All across the supply chain, labor shortages cause delays and disruptions. When your providers don’t have enough drivers, how do you ensure that orders are still delivered on time?
Delivery Speed Expectations
Customers have more options than ever before. Thanks to the top eCommerce giants, buyers want fast and free shipping. Two-day shipping is now the bare minimum standard. Same-day shipping and on-demand delivery are now wanted, if not expected.
Inventory Management
Inventory management is a constant balancing act. Too much inventory is unnecessary and costs money to store, but too little causes delays and lost sales. You need a way to have the right amount every time.
Managing Delivery Costs
Customer expectations are high. They want fast and free delivery. As a retailer, you need to find a way to keep costs low and quality high. It’s a constant struggle to find that balance.
Visibility (Internal and External)
Visibility is vital. If you can’t see what’s going on, you can’t manage issues. A lack of internal visibility for you and your partners leads to poor inventory management, missed deadlines, and a reactive approach to problem-solving. A lack of external visibility for your buyers leads to dissatisfied customers, more support calls, wasted resources, missed deliveries, and lost business.
Last-Mile Delivery
Last-mile delivery — the final leg of your logistics process that ends at your customers’ doors — is the most complex part, as it requires using local resources and residential roads. It’s also the most expensive, as you can ship orders to regions in bulk, but each last-mile delivery is individual and requires going to one person’s address.
How Elite EXTRA’s 3PL Software Solves Your Logistics Challenges
Elite EXTRA’s award-winning 3PL software, along with the rest of our suite of cloud-based last-mile logistics software solutions, are the perfect way to navigate all these challenges with ease while saving time and money. Here’s how we address each of these challenges.
Logistics Complexity, Simplified
Our 3PL software allows you to easily compare prices and delivery times to find the best carrier based on your priorities. You can also automate the process using your own business rules to tell the software which factors matter most and how to pick the best option, the exact same way you would.
Our Delivery Network lets you choose from the nation’s top carriers. Choose from your favorite nationwide carriers, local providers, and crowdsourced delivery fleets. Best of all, you can connect with them all through our platform without needing individual contracts. Plus, our Routing and Dispatch software ensures efficiency at every step.
Meet and Exceed Delivery Speed Expectations
The biggest retailers have set the bar very high. You’re expected to compete with companies that have seemingly infinite resources. With Elite EXTRA, you can.
With our Delivery Network, you can access all the best delivery provider options and compare them to find the fastest option at the best price. Crowd-sourced delivery providers like DoorDash and Uber allow you to deliver on-demand and get packages to customers the same day.
Our Routing and Dispatch software can automatically find the best option for you every time and provide drivers with the most efficient route to cut down delivery times.
With real-time traffic updates and Dynamic Routing, you can avoid delays by detecting them in advance and automatically changing the route to reflect the new, most efficient path based on current road conditions.
Use Reporting and Analytics for Better Inventory Management
With Elite EXTRA’s Delivery Network, you get a wide network of reliable delivery partners to ensure your logistics run smoothly and everything arrives on time.
You also get a greater level of visibility to see where everything is with ease and collect more data. Then, our Business Analytics and Reports can show you exactly how well your partners and drivers are performing, and help you visualize how much inventory you go through in a given period.
You can use that information to make data-driven decisions about how much inventory to carry, what times of year to have more or less inventory, and much more!
Leverage Resources to Manage Delivery Costs
Delivery — especially last-mile delivery — is a major source of spending for businesses. It’s vital to keep delivery costs as low as possible, without negatively impacting quality or customer experience. That is a major challenge, but not an insurmountable one.
If you leverage the right resources, you can cut costs while actually improving quality and customer experience. With Elite EXTRA’s software solutions, improve accuracy and efficiency, and streamline processes.
Automation makes redundant, complex, and administrative tasks faster, cheaper, and more accurate by leveraging the speed of technology to complete tasks and complex calculations in a fraction of the time a human could while eliminating human error.
Leveraging our Delivery Network can give you access to a larger pool of experts who know how to increase efficiency, eliminate waste, and lower costs. Leveraging carrier expertise can cut costs by negotiating better rates based on scale, like bulk pricing. Plus, having a wide network increases cost efficiency by finding the closest carrier and best rate.
Improve Internal and External Visibility
Real-time tracking data allows all partners to see orders at all stages, spot issues as they happen, or better yet, before they happen, and respond proactively. Avoiding an issue will always be more cost-effective than fixing a problem that has already occurred.
Real-time package tracking empowers customers by giving them the information they need to be there when their package comes. This improves customer experience and cuts down on failed deliveries, which are costly for your business.
This improved visibility also makes customers feel better and more in control, prevents service calls, and saves time and resources while improving customer experience and customer retention.
Optimize and Streamline Last-Mile Delivery
Elite EXTRA’s Last Mile Delivery software integrates seamlessly with your 3PLs and customer portal to provide optimization solutions. You can choose to prioritize the shortest route, the fastest route, or the route that delivers to your VIP customers first.
Using business logic, this can be done automatically while using the same factors you would use to weigh each decision. The more hands-off your processes are, the more time you have to spend on the things that really need your attention.
Watch our webinar on how to spend less and profit more on your last-mile deliveries.
Benefits of 3PL Software from Elite EXTRA
With the power of 3PL software from Elite EXTRA, you can:
- Offer faster delivery
- Provide the highest level of visibility for your team and your customers
- Gain more options
- Easily compare delivery speed and cost at a glance
- Automatically add delivery cost to customer bills at checkout
- Automate your logistics to save time and money
- Make smarter, data-driven decisions
- Integrate our other solutions seamlessly for a full suite of award-winning logistics software
Top Features of Elite EXTRA’s 3PL Software
To get a better idea of exactly what you get with Elite EXTRA’s 3PL software, let’s go over every feature a bit more in-depth.
Top Elite Extra 3PL Software Features:
- Extensive Third-Party Delivery Network: Gain access to the nation’s top 3PL providers, cover a larger delivery area, and offer faster delivery with more two-day, next-day, same-day, and on-demand delivery options thanks to our crowdsourced delivery carriers like DoorDash and Uber.
- Delivery Automation: With business rules setting capabilities, you can automate your routing and dispatch processes without losing control over the factors used to make those decisions.
- Delivery Price and Time Comparison: Easily see the best 3PL provider options for each delivery, how much they’ll charge, and how fast they can make the delivery, all in one place for easy one-to-one comparisons.
- Central Contracting and Billing: Say goodbye to the hassle of keeping track of dozens of contracts and dealing with the billing process for each one. Our easy-to-use 3PL software allows you to access all the best 3PL carriers with central contracting and billing, so everything is handled right from our software, making payments and tracking a breeze.
- Business Analytics and Reports: Get detailed insights into your providers and processes. See exactly who is performing best, how fast deliveries are made, how accurate estimates are, and much more. Then you can make decisions based on solid facts and proven metrics, eliminating the guess work and making your decisions more accurate and cost-effective.
3PL FAQs
To help you make the best decision for your business and provide all the information you need, here are the most frequently asked questions about Elite EXTRA’s 3PL software and our answers.
What Does 3PL Stand for?
3PL stands for third-party logistics. This means that your logistics process is handled by an outside company.
Is 3PL a Software?
Yes, 3PL is a kind of software. However, it’s also a larger idea that encompasses any part of the logistics process being handled by a third-party or outside provider.
What is 3PL Software?
3PL software is technology that facilitates the process of using outside carriers to handle your logistics. In the case of Elite EXTRA’s 3PL software, we connect your business to the nation’s top providers to give you more options and allow you to compare delivery times and pricing. We also have automation features to make the process completely hands-off.
What is an Example of a 3PL Software?
Elite EXTRA’s Delivery Network is an excellent example of a 3PL software that can help your business access a large number of outside providers. This gives you more options and more control.
What are the Top 3 Features of 3PL Fulfillment Software?
The top three features of Elite EXTRA’s 3PL software would have to be:
- Central contracting and billing capabilities that connect you to numerous top delivery fleets and crowdsourced delivery providers without individual contracts, and one platform to handle all your billing.
- Delivery automation that makes the routing and dispatch process hands-off by using business rules to mimic your decision-making process, cutting costs and saving time.
- Delivery provider analytics that let you see all the data on your past deliveries to make the best possible data-driven decisions.
How Does 3PL Software Enable eCommerce Growth?
With Elite EXTRA’s 3PL software, you get a wider network of delivery providers to allow expansion into more delivery areas. You can also save money and time, allowing you more resources for business expansion efforts.
Is 3PL Software Expensive?
3PL software pricing can vary widely depending on your needs and the features offered. Elite EXTRA’s software is customized to match your exact needs, so our pricing is also bespoke to match your requirements.
Fill out our simple form to receive your custom quote!
How Do I Get Started with Third-Party Logistics Fulfillment Software?
To get started today, contact our team to learn how Elite EXTRA can optimize your operations or request a demo to see our software in action.
