PS/Ship
PS/Invoice
PS/Receiver
PS/Pouch
With 1,300 employees, nearly 20 offices nationwide and clients around the world, this Am Law 100 firm* had critical operational requirements not met by carrier shipping system solutions.
Life Before PS/Ship Was Inefficient and Frustrating
Before the firm started using the integrated solution of PS/Ship and PS/Invoice, the procurement and logistics team spent hundreds of hours managing shipping accounts and user logins, correcting billing codes and processing carrier invoices, each of which contained hundreds of transactions.
“There were a lot of inefficient manual processes,” recalls the firm’s procurement and logistics manager.
Tracking down missing billing information for shipments was extremely difficult and time consuming since it involved stringing together a patchwork of information from multiple sources — mailrooms, carriers and senders. Often the firm would write-off these shipments and absorb the costs associated with them.
PS/Ship Shatters the Status Quo
“I became aware of PS/Ship through a recommendation from a carrier and immediately knew it was built for us,” the manager says. After completing a cost-savings analysis with the PS/Ship team and selecting PS/Ship’s price-per-package (PPP) transactional pricing model, the firm agreed to move forward.
PS/Ship’s PPP model allows for a small fee to be added to each shipment processed, and PS/Invoice automatically allocates this cost (in addition to the carrier freight charges) to the matter on billable shipments and to the appropriate GL account on non-billable ones.
With the implementation of PS/Ship, the manager saw an immediate reduction in friction. PS/Ship’s cloud-based software makes shipping easier for users by providing a Single Sign-on (SSO) experience, eliminating the need for multiple logins and passwords to carrier websites; the process is the same regardless of the carrier selected.
PS/Ship guides the user through the process, refining the shipping experience to just the pieces of information needed by the carriers. It also requires valid client/matter information for each shipment — this information is vital to the finance team when invoices are processed so costs can be properly allocated and recovered from clients.
“PS/Ship lets us set recommended service levels and accessorial options” the manager says. “This lets us influence user behavior and save the firm — and our clients — money. PS/Invoice has also modernized our invoice review process, which is now automated and takes only minutes to complete each week.” That’s a significant savings from the six to eight hours per week it used to take. This has helped the firm’s accounting department eliminate unnecessary manual labor, allowing hundreds of hours to be spent on more important tasks each year.
In addition, PS/Ship provides tracking information and receipts for clients and offers an extensive look into the firm’s shipping history for trend analysis and resource planning. “The history is just phenomenal. I don’t have to worry about going to multiple websites to try to track all the information anymore — it’s all right there.”
PS/Invoice helped modernize the carrier invoicing process by automating the workflow and providing visibility across the firm.
Improved Security, Easy Address Changes and a Smooth Transition Are Added Bonuses
PS/Ship has also offered a level of security the manager didn’t anticipate. In the past, the manager says her firm had its FedEx account compromised four times, which caused tons of frustration as new accounts needed to be set up. That added unnecessary juggling by the operations teams to carry on the firm’s normal shipping activity.
“It’s a big undertaking to move everybody over to a new account seamlessly,” she says. “But because PS/Ship hides our account numbers from view and integrates with our firm network for a secure Single Sign-on experience, our FedEx accounts haven’t been compromised a single time.”
The software also helps streamline the process of getting new information to the entire firm, including simple yet important things like address changes.
“PS/Ship has been phenomenal about making address changes, because we’re constantly moving our offices around,” the manager says. “Now when the addresses have to change, I just email PS/Ship and they take care of it for me.”
But perhaps the best part is the ease with which her firm transitioned to PS/Ship. “The only part that took a little time was getting it set up, and even that went smoothly,” she says. “I have over a thousand employees here — and to teach them how to use PS/Ship, we didn’t even have to do a class. We just sent out an email and told them how to do it — it was that simple.”
*The firm wishes to remain anonymous to protect its privacy.
