Global parcel visibility offering rolled out by project44

Chicago- based project44, a technology services provider offering standardized, secure Web service API (application programming interfaces) integrations enabling 3PLs and shippers to connect with carriers in real time, announced today it has added an international and domestic parcel tracking and address validation offering to its service menu.

Parcel helps project44 round out its modal offerings, which already include Less-Than-Truckload, Volume LTL, Full Truckload, and Rail Visibility.

The company cited various benefits in adding parcel to the fold, including: enabling its growing book of business of retailers, suppliers, and logistics service providers to augment brand loyalty, meet on-demand customer expectations, lower costs while increasing productivity; eliminate stockouts without increasing inventory levels, and meeting tight delivery requirements. 

What’s more, project44 said that its new parcel product brings API-based integrations into top domestic and international parcel capacity providers, including more than 115 major global markets and regional carriers such as FedEx, UPS, USPS, DHL, Royal Mail, Hermes, and Deutsche Post, among others. And it added that parcel carriers that are currently not on its network can be integrated in two weeks for no fee.

“Parcel was the missing piece,” said Jett McCandless, project44 CEO and Founder, in an interview. “Our customers are looking for a [single source offering] technology platform, with an integration layer that has visibility into their shipments.”

In some cases with customers, he explained that building out the parcel, or small package, offering, in some cases, served as an extension of what they were doing with project44’s LTL offering. 

“Everyone was using LTL for small package so we needed to build that out for those customers,” he said. “And we have customers, of course, that use other modes pretty heavily and may just have a little bit of small package. What our customers are looking for is that single connection, or that single project44 API, that gives them access to entire markets. They want more than just domestic, and this is their first reach into international.”

This also serves as project44s first truly global product expansion, too, with McCandless noting that its LTL and Truckload offerings are available in Canada and Mexico. The parcel offering is available in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Australia, as well as domestically. Having international visibility, he said, is something customers have been clamoring for.

“This [new parcel offering] is serving as a catalyst to go into other markets with other modes,” he said.

Some of the key parcel-related benefits this new offering brings, according to McCandless, impact different aspects of a customer’s workflow.

“We started out with just a visibility component for parcel globally, and that will change by the end of the year,” he said. “It currently offers parcel rating, label creation, invoicing and visibility. Visibility is hot right now, and we have the largest visibility platform, as well as the largest automation platform. The real benefit is that customers can have a more ‘Amazon-like’ experience, which is what visibility gives them, they can ship to end customers and expand their end customer’s bases for commerce, and provide the predictability and reliability companies are looking for with benefit exception.”

A significant difference between this global parcel offering, as opposed to other modes like trucking or ocean, said McCandless, is that non-parcel modes are typically not shipping to consumers as part of an e-commerce strategy, whereas the project44 parcel offering is shipping directly to a consumer’s door and expanding into markets.