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How to Avoid Parcel Shipping Fraud & Maintain an Efficient Supply Chain

By TransImpact
Your company’s supply chain is hard enough to manage on a good day. When you add in the influence of bad actors and other disruptors, things can quickly go from good to bad. Shippers need to constantly deal with threats and barriers to operate an efficient supply chain by overcoming market risks, maintaining compliance, and adhering to regulations. And lately, they’ve also increasingly had to deal with the costly problem of parcel fraud. Already growing fast, e-commerce exploded during the pandemic. With the increase came a lot more small parcel shipments handled by FedEx, UPS, the USPS, and other regional carriers. Soon after, unfortunately, people are taking advantage of the situation through parcel fraud. In this blog, TransImpact explains how parcel fraud can occur and how their innovative technology tool, parcel spend intelligence, can help mitigate the risks and challenges.

How Does Parcel Fraud Happen?

All shipping operations face many external threats, ranging from physical theft and pilferage during transit to collusion and falsification of paperwork and invoices.

Large volumes of parcels (and money spent) managed through complicated shipping networks make logistics operations a prime target for fraudsters. The fact that many companies operate their supply chain in decentralized ways magnifies the opportunity for those with illicit intentions. Man carrying package

The source of parcel fraud can vary from:

  • Internal fraud such as when employees ship unauthorized packages.
  • External fraud such as when thieves use stolen account numbers.
  • Carrier ”mistakes” that result in large invoice errors and unnecessary expense.

Parcel and other shipping-related fraud can happen to companies that are not paying close enough attention to what’s going on in their operation. The good news is that fraud can quickly be remedied with technology, and in many cases, by simply looking closer at the data.

Here’s How Parcel Spend Intelligence Identifies & Prevents Parcel Fraud

Leading parcel BI tools, like Parcel Spend Intelligence from TransImpact, provide out-of-the-box fraud prevention tools to any company that ships small packages.

Here are a few benefits of Parcel Spend Intelligence:

  1. Automated Risk Alerts: Using data pulled automatically from carrier invoices, Parcel Spend Intelligence scans for anomalous shipments indicating potential fraud and sends alerts to the user. This function quickly highlights when a package or cost appears suspect, so corrective action can be swift. Since not all fraud is the same, alerts can be customed based on the user’s specific business and shipping patterns.

  2. Predictive Analytics: Using advanced data and analytics, Parcel Spend Intelligence can forecast potential future fraud risks based on historical data and ongoing trends. With such future visibility, shippers can proactively implement measures to mitigate and be better prepared in the event of unusual behavior. Odd spikes in uncommon surcharges or shipments in certain lanes are two patterns that analytics can quickly identify.

  3. Comprehensive Visibility: Transparency is necessary for every shipping operation. With pre-built and intuitive dashboards and configurable reports, Parcel Spend Intelligence offers users both high-level and deep insights into their parcel network operations. This includes metrics ranging from carrier service performance to shipping costs. These provide granular views that can surface unusual trends that may need attention.

  4. Enhanced Security Protocols: Parcel Spend Intelligence improves security in the day-to-day operations, too, by connecting to shippers’ label manifesting systems. For example, the platform can ingest the known activity for a shipper and then isolate packages that were not part of a package provided to the carrier. The extra security measure helps prevent parcel fraud by identifying orders that were not known to the shipper and easily determining their legitimacy.

  5. Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing: Parcel Spend Intelligence fosters collaboration and knowledge sharing among stakeholders across all users’ supply chain ecosystems. As a trusted partner and fraud expert, TransImpact proactively supports the exchange of information and insights related to parcel delivery and fraud prevention. This collaboration is undergirded by the anonymized data from and visibility into over $3 billion in annual parcel spend across more than 1,000 parcel shippers. As a whole, it enhances the industry’s collective awareness of emerging fraud trends.

Technology as the Solution to Supply Chain Risks, Compliance & Fraud

Companies unaware of how technology can mitigate malintent in their supply chain, such as fraud, may someday soon learn an expensive lesson. TransImpact can help OMNIA Partners' members gain visibility into their supply chain operations and unnecessary spend by utilizing the software. Want to try Parcel Spend Intelligence free for 30 days? Click the button below to get started!

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About TransImpact & OMNIA Partners

As your ally in the purchasing process, OMNIA Partners is dedicated to optimizing procurement for your organization. Your free membership provides full access to our portfolio of value-driven contracts, spend visibility, analytics, and subject matter experts. TransImpact is an industry leader in end-to-end technology-based supply chain solutions that optimize operations, create efficiencies, and improve margins to transform the business performance for members of OMNIA Partners. Discover how you can start saving by leveraging group purchasing with our contracts available through OMNIA Partners.