Optimize Your Logistics With Luma, EasyPost’s New Shipping AI
by Jaidyn Farar
As AI has become more popular, you’ve probably wondered if (or when) you should incorporate it into your shipping and logistics processes. Do you get started with AI now and risk spending money on a tool that doesn’t work, or hold off and risk getting left behind by the competition?
At EasyPost, we feel confident that parcel shippers can benefit greatly from AI technology—and the best time to get started is now.
In this article, we explain how EasyPost’s new shipping AI, Luma, optimizes shipping processes. The content comes from a recent episode of the Unboxing Logistics podcast, where product marketing manager Joe Dieter walks through the features and capabilities of Luma.
What does Luma do?
Joe describes Luma as “the most approachable shipping analytics platform that's ever been built.”
Its three main solutions—Luma Insights, Luma Select, and Luma Advisor—work together to improve shipping reliability while decreasing costs. Let’s take a closer look at each one.
Luma Insights
Luma Insights gives businesses a close look at their current shipping operations, revealing “how your different carriers and service levels are performing.” Joe lists a few questions that Luma Insights can answer:
- What is the cost per package?
- What is the average time in transit?
- Why are shipments delayed?
- Why are shipments not showing up where they should be showing up?
One of the most unique features of Luma Insights is Peer Shipping Benchmarking. Joe explains how it works—and why it’s a game-changer:
“There's no other shipping analytics product … that allows you to [see how you’re] doing in comparison to shippers like [you].”
“[Your] competitors, companies of [your] exact size, companies doing [your] kind of volume. How much are they spending on shipping? What carriers and service levels are they choosing? How do they ship? Do they have some best practices [you] should be thinking about?”
Luma Advisor
While Luma Insights provides a look at your shipping today, Luma Advisor focuses on how you can be better tomorrow, recommending “changes … you could make, based on current data, to save time and money.”
Luma Select
Luma Select works hand-in-hand with Luma Advisor to automatically purchase the best shipping labels according to your preferences and needs.
Here’s how it works: “If Luma Advisor says, we recommend you make the switch over to this carrier for this type of shipment, Luma Select will automatically abide by that advice and purchase the right label every time.”
“You can say, I want this time in transit, I want to work with these sorts of carriers, I want to work within this budget, I don't want to go over this cost per label, and I want this degree of delivery confidence. … And then our system, based on billions of past historical shipments, can say … here's the right label.”
Why do shippers need a tool like Luma?
As Joe points out, “It's never been harder to ship.”
He goes on, “Shipping is daunting. It's expensive. It feels very manual. In an increasingly modern and tech-advanced world, it still feels, in some ways, archaic. Luma casts light into that darkness of uncertainty. You finally have … an illuminated path to cost savings, to a more efficient shipping operation.”
What sets Luma apart from other AI tools?
One thing that sets Luma apart from other AI solutions is the vast quantity of shipping data it uses to make recommendations.
Launched in 2012, the EasyPost Shipping API has been processing shipments for over a dozen years. Luma reviews the data of billions of historical shipments to offer in-depth analysis, which is something other solutions on the market can’t offer.
Joe explains, “Your AI is as good as the data that fed it. … When you have the data of billions of past historical shipments, that means you have a good AI. A lot of the [other] AI shipping tools out there haven't processed billions of shipments.”
Who should use Luma?
In short, everyone! “We think from small shippers all the way up to upper mid-market, even enterprise shippers, they're going to need this product.”
How to get started with Luma
Currently, Luma works together with the core EasyPost API. If you’re currently using the API, simply sign up here or reach out to your customer support representative to get started with Luma.
Or contact us to get started with EasyPost for the first time.