Kewill, a global leader in supply chain software, has a long, collaborative history with the United States Postal Service. Its innovative solutions have helped deliver billions of parcels from Anchorage, Alaska to Zephyrhills, Florida, bringing joy and convenience to just about everyone with a mailbox.
Founded in 1972, Kewill offers broad array of supply chain software solutions that cover everything from truckload shipping and freight forwarding to customs compliance and visibility tools. But it is Kewill’s innovative approach to parcel shipping and e-commerce over the past 25 years that has helped forge its close ties with the Postal Service.
Originally integrated with USPS postage meters, Kewill Clippership – one of the world’s first multi-carrier parcel solutions – played a key role in helping the Postal Service move to a manifesting system in the late 1980s, which simplified the billing process for customers with large parcel volumes. A decade later Clippership was one of the first products to be certified by the Postal Service as part of its initiative to allow customers to track their packages over the Internet after printing out barcode mailing labels.
Kewill was also instrumental in the Postal Service’s development and implementation of Delivery Confirmation in 1999 and Signature Confirmation in 2001.
Today the tight integration between Kewill and the USPS is centered on Clippership and Kewill Flagship. In use by hundreds of customers, these products automate shipping procedures and improve efficiency, which makes shipments easier to process for the Postal Service and results in faster, more reliable deliveries to customers. All told, more than five million packages are shipped each day with the help of Kewill software, the largest third-party shipping volume in the United States.
Kewill Flagship is an enterprise class multi-carrier shipping management solution that supports complex, high volume domestic and international shipping. It’s used by some of the biggest companies in the world, including Procter & Gamble, Lockheed Martin, Anheuser-Busch, Lowe’s and Estee Lauder.
Kewill Clippership is the leading multi-carrier parcel solution for medium-sized businesses and provides integration and business rules management for hundreds of shippers each day, including blue chip companies like General Mills, Hallmark, Sherwin-Williams and Mercedes Benz.
In 2010 Flagship became the first multi-carrier parcel shipping system to be fully certified as compliant with the USPS’ Electronic Verification System (eVS). eVS allows high-volume package mailers to document and pay postage electronically, eliminating massive amounts of paperwork and streamlining operations for both the shipper and the USPS.
Two years later the Postal Service recognized Kewill for its innovation and efforts to simplify and automate mailing processes, with Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe presenting the company with the Mail Technology Award at the National Postal Forum.
Mail Technology Award, 2012
The Postal Service honored Kewill for “investing both time and resources into designing products that enhance and support the internal mail and parcel acceptance procedures.” It went on to say that working together with Kewill had helped the USPS in “identifying millions of dollars in new business opportunities.”
As the Internet Age has unfolded, Kewill has played a vital role in the transformation of the retail landscape from brick and mortar stores to e-commerce, with its parcel solutions serving as a catalyst in the move toward omni-channel fulfillment practices.
Kewill has been front-and-center of this consumer revolution, giving businesses the agility they need to quickly fulfill orders and get them out the door. Quick delivery is paramount to e-commerce success and keeping the modern day consumer happy, and automation tools like Clippership and Flagship help companies eliminate errors and ensure that packages are delivered to the right place at the right time.
Along with the growth of email, e-commerce is helping remake the Postal Service. Shipping and package volumes have been steadily increasing for years and have emerged as a key driver for USPS business even as traditional mail volumes have declined. As the appeal of online shopping grows and the convenience of mobile technology becomes more widespread, e-commerce will continue to grab a growing share of the Postal Service’s retail sales.
Kewill continues to hone and develop leading-edge parcel shipping solutions that will assist the Postal Service and its customers in navigating the e-commerce transformation as it expands and evolves, which means this long, fruitful partnership will continue to flourish long into the future.
