First steps to a better last mile for e-commerce

There’s an API for that

With last-mile delivery, physical impediments such as bad weather, downed power lines, damaged mailboxes and other problems that confound delivery come with the territory, costing the industry billions of dollars in lost time and expenses. Just ask any postal carrier.

Another common pitfall that is less apparent occurs much earlier in the supply chain process: the transfer of inaccurate or outdated information. Jett McCandless, co-founder of project44, a logistics platform that uses cloud-based freight data to connect shippers and 3PLs to available freight capacity, explained that much of the air cargo industry still uses electronic data interchanges (EDIs), a technology first developed in 1948, to share data transmission in batches at pre-determined intervals. As with many fax machines, information in EDIs is stored and sent without confirmation, which can delay freight transactions up to hours.

Many non-Amazon e-commerce retailers lack the technology to match the destination ZIP code with the shipping ZIP code to accurately estimate transit time, McCandless explained. Instead, they “hard-code the worst case scenario” – or the most time-consuming option – in order to avoid a “negative customer experience.” This leads to shopping cart abandonment, as well as a vast discrepancy in delivery times.

The incompatibility of EDIs with modern technology is killing business, McCandless lamented. “Because we use EDIs in trucking,” he said, “the issues can’t be resolved until the communication layer is fixed.”

The answer is the use of application program interfaces (APIs), which are a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications. While many individual companies along the delivery chain lack the footprint to cover shipping, warehousing and final delivery, proper integration can allow them to make fast and efficient deliveries.

Unlike EDIs, APIs are instantaneous, allowing e-retailers to offer accurate shipping information to customers in real time by interfacing, through platforms like project44, with the rest of the delivery chain. With APIs, shipping data, such as rates, dispatching, tracking and more, are automatically triggered and updated.