ShipNow System Tracks Documents, Packages

March 1, 2004
ShipNow Inc., a provider of enterprise shipment management solutions, launched a package shipping and receiving product for financial institutions and

ShipNow Inc., a provider of enterprise shipment management solutions, launched a package shipping and receiving product for financial institutions and corporations seeking greater control of inbound and outbound documents and packages.

The product, DI-Corporate, provides assistance to receive, track, route, document and audit incoming and outgoing packages, payments, orders, correspondence and certified mail.

DI-Corporate is currently being installed in a major financial services firm with 30,000 employees, 65 offices, and eight centralized receiving facilities. All employees of the firm will be able to access DI-Corporate from any of the firm's desktop computers via Web interface. Users will be able to ship parcels to anywhere in the world through an easy-to-use interface that will recommend the most cost-efficient carrier service.

The system automatically analyzes all available carrier services, finding the most cost-efficient way to send the package. And as part of this decision-making process, the system takes into consideration all negotiated contract rates with the carriers to take full advantages of negotiated carrier discounts. This is the first time this money-saving procedure, an often used business-rule for major shipping departments, has been used for desktop shipping.

On the receiving side, hand-held devices document incoming packages, certified mail and other sensitive items. The devices also capture electronic signatures and provide routing information. The system routes internal mail. The resulting information is captured in the corporation's preferred database and is available for management reports or auditing when necessary.

Other inbound features include scan-based receipt confirmation and scan-managed sorting.

Each system can be tailored for the needs of the corporation, utilizing advanced business rules and integrating into existing enterprise software systems.

DI-Corporate's out-bound system is based on ShipNow's DI Server multi-carrier parcel shipping system. In addition to shipping from the most cost-effective carrier service, including internal couriers, DI-Corporate provides corporations much greater control over the office use of express shipping. For instance, it features integrated reporting by user and cost center. The result is a rapid return-on-investment. DI-Corporate also features internal tracking control, including electronic signature capture on internal delivery.

In addition, the out-bound system, which can ship to anywhere from anywhere in the world, is scalable and can be installed in any workflow environment. Other features include address verification, e-mail notification and the ability to track a package across multiple modes of transportation.

DI-Corporate, which is capable of handling millions of transactions an hour, has an open architecture and is database independent. It will support batch and radio frequency hand-helds as well as Palm-based touch pen computers for signature capture. It can serve multiple offices and distribution centers from a single, centralized server.

For more information visit www.shipnow.com.