Guide ยท 3PL
Onboarding customers in days, not months
We're a 3PL. Every new customer takes months to connect. EDI or API?
Both, and the choice is the customer's, not yours. What makes onboarding take months is that every customer is built from scratch; the fix is one canonical load record on your side and a library of formats you already run.
ASSUMEDWe assumed a 3PL whose customers tender by EDI, API, portal and email, all mapped one at a time.
Your stack, as you described it
Where people are the glue
- Every onboarding is a project
- Rate sheets live in PDFs, not in the system
Three ways through
- Use what you haveOften enough
Your TMS's EDI module handles the standard sets (204, 990, 214, 210). Use it for the customers who speak EDI and stop custom-mapping the same thing twice.
- ConnectWhat we'd do
An integration layer with a canonical load record: each new customer maps to it once, in EDI or API, in days or weeks, and changes on their side get absorbed by Run.
- BuildOnly if it's your edge
A customer-facing API product, if 'easy to integrate with' is how you win accounts. Some 3PLs make it the brand.
What happens next
- We look at your last five onboardings side by side.
- Connect starts with the customer type you win most often.
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