In a previous article, we talked about why retailers and sellers need parcel shipping insurance. Protecting your business from any liabilities resulting from poor handling, losses, or damages incurred during transit is essential, but is time consuming and tedious. That's why finding the best shipping insurance is so important. There is a need for streamlining long processes and maximizing efficiency along each step of the way.

Some steps involved in insuring your shipments include:

• Calculating the insurance value for your shipments and inputting data into a system or multiple systems
• Risk assessment involved in package destinations and carrier details
• Filing claims in the event of damages, or loss (including gathering documentation) in the event of a loss accompanied by the entire loss adjustment processing time

For sellers who manage a large number of shipments each day, these processes can take up a lot of time and resources to handle manually. Then, factor in any human errors that may need correcting after the fact causing time and labor dollars to add up.

However, in today’s technology-driven world, businesses are finding ways to automate their operation processes, in an effort to increase their efficiency and minimize human involvement.

The shipping insurance industry is no exception to this, where insurance providers have started developing solutions designed to allow sellers and shippers to easily manage their shipping and insurance operations on multiple shipments at a time.

Here are a few ways in which automated systems are easing parcel shipping insurance processes for businesses:

Utilizing Business Intelligence to Increase Efficiency

Automated software systems rely on the availability of data - both historic and present - to perform their designated processes.

This means, every aspect of your business is translated into data - cold, hard data that is stored in databases for further processing and analysis.

The data input, utilized and generated during these processes can be converted into business intelligence that can help business owners and sellers track and improve the efficiency of all the operations involved in shipping including:

• Generating notifications for carrier exceptions and package deliveries: Automated notifications generated for specific conditions such as carrier exceptions or package delivery delays or failures. Carriers may give notifications, but they are not tailored to high end packages as much as they are to general shipments. For instance, if Cabrella detects your package is past two hours late, we notify you as soon as possible and in certain instances, provide instructions as to whom to contact regarding the details of your high-value shipment.

• Generating and filing insurance claims: Automatically populate insurance claim forms with 90% of pertinent information and documentation required, all easily accessible through the system’s data and information pool. For example, Cabrella’s software simply requires you provide a copy of an invoice and the tracking code and the rest of the information regarding your claim is generated without manual input and tracking down multiple documents involved in the logistics process. Carriers typically try to avoid paying claims and require heavy documentation over a long period of time.

• Tracking the overall operations: Through intelligence reports generated by automated software and with the help of insurance underwriters, business owners can assess the overall efficiency and safety of their shipping operations and thereby, tweak their operations to choose the right shipping strategies such as:

• Keeping track of insured value across varying shipments

• Analyze shipping efficiency on a geographical, region-to-region basis to identify regions and zip codes where loss and damage risk is high. Shipping hazards can present themselves at different times in varying regions. Using insurance software allows you to get notifications about where and what to avoid when shipping both domestically and internationally. Whether UPS is facing heavy loss ratios in Texas or there is a potential danger in a certain area across all carriers, insurance software can help keep you prepared and notified.

Seamless API Integration

One of the major aspects that businesses consider before they involve automation into their operations is how seamlessly the solutions integrate with their existing processes. In the parcel shipping industry, this translates to integrating a business’s existing shipping or order management process with the shipping insurance solution. The automated insurance solution is integrated through a simple API integration.

The API integration makes your operations:

• Seamless: The shipping software API integration is seamless, and once it is integrated into your carrier accounts, it begins to access the necessary data and information such as, shipping details and tracking information from your carrier account. The integration also allows the insurance software to work without interrupting the shipping process.

• Consistent: The integration allows the parcel shipping insurance system to work in the background as a part of your shipping application. It interweaves the insurance component into the shipping or order management process, thereby, giving you a consistent and integrated user experience, with up-to-date information and comprehensive intelligence.

• Efficient: Since the API is directly integrated into your shipping or order management system, it allows the automated parcel insurance component to immediately access the pertinent data to populate and generate shipping insurance claims within a far lesser time than manual claims.

Consolidating Parcel and Shipping Details in One Place

All of your parcel insurance details are kept in one location.

Support for Multiple Shipping Carriers: Whether you use a single shipping carrier or multiple carriers, there are few parcel insurance automated software programs built to support them and integrate seamlessly with their shipping systems. This includes FedEx Ship Manager™, UPS WorldShip™, USPS, Amazon and eBay fulfillment programs.

Filing and Tracking Insurance Claims: Businesses have to juggle managing sales, orders and deliveries, along with shipping logistics. For many private shipping carriers, shipping insurance is usually an add-on service, and as such, businesses that sign up for it will need to add managing and tracking insurance claims from the time they’re filed to the time they’re closed.

Manually filing and tracking filing claims requires a lot of time, especially if they have opted for more than shipping carrier since each carrier may have its own set of conditions and requirements for insurance claims.

With automated shipping insurance systems, sellers can open, manage and track all their claims under one single dashboard in real-time. Automated parcel insurance systems can remove any delays by automatically generating 90% of claim information as soon as tracking code information and invoices are recorded. Through Cabrella, after the claim information is filed, representatives are adamant about completing and pushing along claims rather than avoiding claims as most carriers will.

Opting for a third-party automated parcel shipping insurance system not only reduces costs and helps you assess risks globally, but it can also streamline your shipping and insurance processes and improve your shipping strategies over time through the business intelligence and insights gained through it.