eCard Systems Leverages Shipping Automation Rules to Reduce Manual Labor and Accelerate Shipping

eCard Systems, a supplier of gift, loyalty and stored-value card systems to the retail, restaurant and service industries, deployed the Descartes ShipRush™ multi-carrier ecommerce parcel shipping solution to reduce manual labor and increase the efficiency and productivity of its fulfillment process. By leveraging shipping automation rules in Descartes ShipRush, eCard Systems shaved one and a half hours off its daily processing time by simplifying and accelerating shipping with FedEx One Rate, its preferred carrier service. 

eCard Systems ships 90% of its order volume with FedEx. With the aim of ensuring predictable pricing and straightforward shipping, the ecommerce vendor uses the flat-rate service FedEx One Rate. To take advantage of FedEx One Rate, customers are required to use a specific service type and packaging. The warehouse team, however, was spending approximately 30 seconds per order—for each and every shipment—to select the appropriate package type and service level by hand. During periods of peak volume, the team regularly struggled to get all shipments labeled in time for the daily FedEx pickup, forcing inconvenient after-hours trips to drop off packages at the local FedEx hub to ensure customers received their orders on time.  

“We’ve been so impressed with the Descartes team who listened to our needs and solved a major shipping challenge in less than an hour! Using a combination of business rules and preset favorites in Descartes ShipRush, we’ve been able to reduce processing time from 30 seconds per order to under 10 seconds. This is lifechanging for us!”  

- Traci Bruton, VP of Sales, eCard Systems 

eCard Systems is a premium gift card manufacturer and service provider for more than 100,000 merchants in the restaurant, retail and hospitality industries in the U.S. and Canada. The company provides a comprehensive approach to gift card programs and processing with digital gift cards, easy online ordering, and U.S.-based manufacturing featuring high quality cards at a good value, all backed by onsite live customer support and innovative merchandising to help merchants extend their brands. 

eCard Systems processes more than 200 ecommerce orders per day from its Nashville, TN warehouse, shipping the vast majority of its order volume using FedEx One Rate. eCard Systems implemented Descartes ShipRush, seamlessly integrated with eCard Systems’ ecommerce sales platform Woocommerce to automate and expedite its fulfillment workflow. 

“We were pleased with Descartes ShipRush but encountered an unexpected challenge with FedEx One Rate. Because we had to manually choose a specific package type for every order to meet FedEx One Rate requirements, our processing speed was lagging,” said Traci Bruton, VP of Sales at eCard Systems.  

“When peak volumes hit, this extra step meant we couldn’t keep up with labelling and frequently missed FedEx’s daily pickup cutoffs. As a result, I regularly had to drive packages to the FedEx depot to make sure orders ended up in customers’ hands on time—not a productive use of my time.” 

eCard Systems consulted with the Descartes team who quickly identified a solution to this shipping challenge:  leverage  ShipRush automation rules to select specific services and package types for the gift card vendor’s four most common shipment types. This reduction of manual labor allowed eCard Systems to save one and a half hours of processing time per day—translating to a significant increase in productivity and bandwidth for the fulfillment team.  

By taking advantage of automation rules in Descartes ShipRush to eliminate repetitive and labor-intensive processes, eCard Systems was able to handle higher order volumes, increase fulfillment accuracy, and enhance the customer experience. “We were shocked at how simple it was to radically transform our shipping process and eliminate a huge headache in our daily workflow,” added Bruton. 

Using Descartes ShipRush, eCard Systems gained 1.5 hours of productive time—per day—by automating recurring manual tasks linked to FedEx One Rate shipments and eliminating after-hours FedEx drop-offs.

eCard Systems boosted profitability by preserving shipping margins on 90% of its orders and eliminating the manual intervention previously needed at the packing bench to select carrier services.  

Descartes ShipRush eliminated error-prone manual tasks (e.g., copy/paste) in eCard Systems’ order data flow and removed the potential for human error in the selection of the right package type for shipments.   

By quickly and easily transforming its labor-intensive shipping process, eCard Systems levelled up the customer experience, ensuring customers receive their orders on time—even during peak periods of high order volumes.