EasyPost Enterprise: Navigating High-Volume Shipping Challenges With Jeff Skaistis & Jeff Goeters From EasyPost - Ep. 13
In This Episode
On this episode of Unboxing Logistics, Jeff Goeters and Jeff Skaistis unveil a new EasyPost platform for high-volume shippers: EasyPost Enterprise. “When out-of-the-box won’t do, that’s what we do,” says Goeters. Skaistis adds, “EasyPost Enterprise is a shipping platform that grows with you over time.”
Challenges enterprise shippers face
Enterprise businesses have to run a tight ship when it comes to shipping—no pun intended. Jeff Skaistis explains why they don’t have room for error. After noting that enterprises ship hundreds of thousands of orders (or more) per day, he continues, “For these companies, shipping is a business-critical operation. You can't have your shipping system go down and expect to make your numbers.”
When to invest in an enterprise shipping solution
Small businesses usually start with an off-the-shelf shipping product, and it works great for a while. But as the organizations scale, things get more complicated. According to Jeff Goeters, many new factors come into play: additional retail locations, online returns, and more. That’s when “you need an enterprise product, which is designed to help you plug all those pieces together.”
An enterprise shipping platform for the future
EasyPost Enterprise is built using new technologies, and it was created with flexibility and adaptability in mind. While many legacy enterprise products are suffering from age, says Jeff Skaistis, EasyPost Enterprise “gives us a lot of opportunity not to just build what has been built before, but to build new things for the future.”
Links
- Connect with Jeff Skaistis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/skaistis/
- Connect with Jeff Goeters on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffgoeters/
- Visit the EasyPost Enterprise site: https://www.easypost.com/enterprise
Transcript
Lori Boyer 00:00
Today we are sharing a little bit about a new offering from EasyPost.
Jeff Goeters 00:05
We are here to introduce EasyPost Enterprise. And the simplest way to say it is when out of the box won't do, that's what we do.
Lori Boyer 00:14
Oh, I love it. You want a job over on marketing getting the taglines in there, huh? Welcome back to Unboxing Logistics.
This is the super fun new podcast from EasyPost where we dive into topics of all sorts that surround the logistics industry. I'm Lori Boyer and I'm your host and I am thrilled today to have with me two of my comrades in arms. Double the Jeffs, double the fun. That's how it's gonna be today. So we're gonna talk about a big exciting new announcement coming from Easypost. And I am just beyond excited to have them.
So I am going to introduce we have Jeff Goeters. Smile and say hi Jeff. And we have Jeff Skaistis. And I'd like each of you to take a second. Let's start with Jeff Skaistis, and then we'll hit Jeff Gaters. Tell us a little bit about who you are, your background, and what you do at EasyPost.
Jeff Skaistis 01:10
My name's Jeff Skaistis. I'm a principal engineer at EasyPost working on EasyPost Enterprise. I've been in this industry doing software for shipping and logistics for approaching 32 years now. So it's, it's, it's been a ride and I'm continuing to enjoy that ride. I'm excited to see what's coming next.
Lori Boyer 01:30
That's incredible. I just have to say, the words doing software in 32 years, especially in our industry. I mean, that's, that's pioneering stuff there, Jeff. All right, Goeters, let's hear from you.
Jeff Goeters 01:43
My name is Jeff Goeters. My claim to fame is I started a competing enterprise company, uh, did all I could do for it, and now I'm here to bring EasyPost far, far beyond that. Add to Jeff's thing, that Jeff... was there in the beginning. So I'm honored to work with him and honored to have him here on our team to help me with that task.
Lori Boyer 02:01
I love working with both of you. You are so knowledgeable. You really, you guys provide us so much insight into the history and just the trends all the time. So today we are going to be talking, um, Jeff Skaistis just mentioned EasyPost Enterprise. So we are going to be diving into this awesome new offering from, uh, Easypost.
And, but before we talk about it, one of our community's favorite segments of the show is where we get to know our guests. Uh, we may have been in the industry, Jeffs, you may have been in the industry for decades, but that doesn't mean that people really know you yet. So today we're going to get to know you a little bit better by playing this or that.
Are you ready for it? Were you staying up all night last night just excited for it?
Jeff Skaistis 02:52
Actually, yeah, I did a lot of prep.
Jeff Goeters 02:53
I'm excited every night, Lori.
Lori Boyer 02:54
Okay, that's so true. That's so true. Okay. All right. First question. I'm going to throw this one to Goeters. Would you rather have a photographic memory or an IQ over 200?
Jeff Goeters 03:08
Photographic memory, definitely.
Lori Boyer 03:11
Really? Why is that?
Jeff Goeters 03:13
You, what does the IQ give you? The ability to outwit, but if you don't have anything to use to base that decision on? Right. The data is the important part of knowing the way a, a journey will go. So I have machines to do the IQ stuff.
Lori Boyer 03:30
That, that is so true with technology, they can be the IQ.
Jeff Goeters 03:34
But yeah, the stuff in my head is the most valuable thing that defines my personality and everything I've done and what I can do to make the world a better place.
Lori Boyer 03:42
That's fantastic. Okay, Skaistis. Okay. We're gonna see this. Are you a video game guy? Or are you a board game kind of person?
Jeff Skaistis 03:52
Uh, more a video game person.
Lori Boyer 03:55
Hey! Look at you!
Jeff Skaistis 03:57
I don't, I don't, I don't play as much as I used to. Back in, you know, in my younger days, you know, I played a little bit more. But, you know, I still enjoy it occasionally.
Lori Boyer 04:06
Are you a console guy or a, like, on the computer guy?
Jeff Skaistis 04:09
Uh, PC. Oh, say it's, it's, it's a wide range. I go from PCs to also vintage arcade, so.
Lori Boyer 04:15
Oh, I love it. I am a video game. I have to say I love board games, but I am totally a video gamer too. People don't always expect that. But you and I, we're gonna have to hop online and play some sort of gaming.
Jeff Goeters 04:27
Jeff, we're gonna get you a steam deck for Christmas.
Jeff Skaistis 04:30
Oh, awesome.
Lori Boyer 04:32
Um, okay. Let's say Goeters, would you rather teach a class or attend a class?
Jeff Goeters 04:39
What's the class on?
Lori Boyer 04:40
Mm, it's on Shakespearean insults.
Jeff Goeters 04:45
I would rather attend the class.
Lori Boyer 04:48
Okay. Okay.
Jeff Goeters 04:49
I always learn more from that.
Lori Boyer 04:51
Is there any subject that you would prefer to teach?
Jeff Goeters 04:54
Anything I can contribute on? I know I have a lot to learn.
I have no delusions that my God, do I not know a lot of stuff yet, so anything that I'm, anything I'm good at and I can contribute to, I would. If it's the 99. 9 percent of the stuff that I don't know yet, I'm willing to learn.
Lori Boyer 05:10
Okay, I love that. That is so critical, that mindset, for everyone in our industry, everyone everywhere. The ability to learn, and the fact that you know you need to learn, shows just how awesome you are. Okay, Skaistis, would you rather, for the rest of your life, only have virtual meetings, or only have in-person meetings? You can only have one?
Jeff Skaistis 05:37
Uh, probably in-person meetings.
Lori Boyer 05:39
Okay. Do you like working, um, remotely? Or, or do you prefer kind of a hybrid? Or what is your thought on remote working?
Jeff Skaistis 05:47
Yeah, I would actually prefer a hybrid. I mean, unfortunately, I'm kind of, you know, I'm kind of stuck here in, not quite by myself in Tulsa. We have a couple other people here. But, um, you know, it's, you know, it's, you know. We spent, uh, last week in the Maryland office.
A bunch of people came up there and it was, it's always, it's always good to do that periodically because there's a lot more, you get a lot more information exchange and that kind of thing, you know, when you're, when you're in person. So, although, you know, remote is definitely more convenient a lot of times. It's also good to kind of do both when you can.
Lori Boyer 06:22
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I love remote. Um, I'm here in the office in Utah and we work this hybrid, um, I said I love remote, but I love hybrid. So, we're in here about half the time and at home, and both work, both have their places. So, I totally agree with that.
Goeters, would you rather have pizza for the rest, or any food you love? We'll say anything, because I don't want to assume you love pizza. That was free for the rest of your life. Or it costs money but it's calorie free for the rest of your life.
Jeff Goeters 06:56
Well, if it was calorie free, I'd die. So by conservation of energy, I would prefer that it be free.
Lori Boyer 07:04
Okay. Okay. You could always go work out after anyway. Okay.
Jeff Goeters 07:09
You need the calories to support the whole, you know, cell process thing, like.
Lori Boyer 07:13
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Our final question is going to be a question for both of you, and it is around your favorite Jeff. So I'm going to say, do you prefer Jeff Bezos or Jeffrey Goldblum?
Jeff Skaistis 07:31
I gotta go with Goldblum.
Lori Boyer 07:33
Honestly. Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. I love it.
Jeff Goeters 07:36
I'm going to go with Bezos. Not necessarily that I think everything, I agree with everything he does but man that gentleman has accomplished some stuff in his life.
Lori Boyer 07:46
Yeah, that is so true.
Jeff Goeters 07:48
In this industry, especially he's a major ... agitator, shall we say? So I have to have the respect for them, what that man's achieved.
Lori Boyer 07:57
Awesome. Well, between the two of you, we hit both of them. So when they watch this, they, they will both feel good. Cause I'm sure they're going to have it on repeat.
Jeff Skaistis 08:05
We'll get it. We'll get it shared to both of them.
Lori Boyer 08:07
Yeah, that's right. That's right. Okay. Let's talk a little bit about our topic for today. Um, we know in the industry that we have a wide variety of people that participate.
Big players. We've got really large companies. We've got small to medium-sized businesses. You know, we have a variety of people, but today we are sharing a little bit about a new offering from EasyPost. And I would love, Goeters, if you want to go ahead and share with us, why don't you tell us what it is that we are announcing and talking about today and maybe in a sentence or two describe what it is.
Jeff Goeters 08:49
So we are here to introduce EasyPost Enterprise. And the simplest way to say it is when out of the box won't do, that's what we do.
Lori Boyer 08:57
Oh, I love it. You want a job over on marketing, getting the taglines in there, huh?
Jeff Goeters 09:02
Sure. That would be really dangerous.
Lori Boyer 09:06
Okay, awesome. Uh, Skaistis, can you tell us, what would you, how would you describe it in a sentence?
EasyPost Enterprise.
Jeff Skaistis 09:13
Yeah, I think EasyPost Enterprise is, you know, it's a, you know, shipping platform that can grow with you over time. So, you know, as your business grows, we can grow with you.
Lori Boyer 09:25
Okay, awesome. I love that. Um, let's talk a little bit about, you know, we talked about the fact that it's enterprise. Enterprise obviously comes with kind of an idea of what that means, but it differs from person to person. Um, Skaistis, what would you say, who would be the right fit? What kind of size company, you know, what sort of vertical are they in? What, would be a good type of company for a good fit for what EasyPost Enterprise offers?
Jeff Skaistis 09:54
Yeah, you know, the nice thing about EasyPost Enterprise is that it does cover a wide range of verticals. I mean, everything from, you know, manufacturing, retail, third-party logistics companies and things like that. The, you know, the key, you know, factor with EasyPost Enterprise is its flexibility and its ability to integrate with other systems, uh, other customer systems to build, you know, basically an integrated solution based on that.
Lori Boyer 10:21
Okay. Um, Goeters, do you have anything to follow up with that?
Jeff Goeters 10:25
That's a pretty good approximation. I would just add that, you know, when you're a small company, you generally buy an off-the-shelf product, you plug it in, you turn it on, and that's what you ship with. When you get big enough that you can't do that, hey, I have a retail location, have multiple retail locations. I've got, you know, I want to do returns online. I want to do as you start adding things together one package, no matter who makes it, no matter how good they are, isn't going to do it. You need to get to what we call an enterprise product, which is designed to help you plug all those pieces together.
And operate a multitude, a plethora of companies, a plethora of entities as one. And that's what Enterprise aspires to do.
Lori Boyer 11:03
Okay, I love that. So I heard, you know, here are some little signs that maybe you're ready for an Enterprise product. Um, multiple locations, that your, your dealings are becoming a little more complex.
Um, that you just are not able to do kind of that out-of-the-box product. Is that what I'm hearing from you guys?
Jeff Goeters 11:22
It can be for any other things too, like if you're a company that can ship with one product, but you get a conveyor system, there aren't a lot of SMB companies that can talk to, uh, the PLCs and the other devices on your conveyor, we can do that easily.
Jeff Skaistis 11:37
So that's exactly, you know, again, it kind of goes back to the growth thing where, you know, if you start with, you know, a basic more manual system, and as you grow, you, you, you add more automation, you add more locations, you add more, you know, capabilities yet. You know, different warehouse management, transportation management, software, and things like that, that you need to be integrated with, EasyPost Enterprise can do for you.
Lori Boyer 12:01
Cool. So, let's talk through a little bit what EasyPost Enterprise does in general. So, if we have somebody who's watching right now, and maybe even to start, they're not that familiar with EasyPost, so I'm going to ask Goeters to start. Explain, you know, what the difference is between EasyPost as its core product and EasyPost Enterprise.
Jeff Goeters 12:22
Sure. So EasyPost core product is an amazing offering. We have one of the highest uptimes in the industry to consume carrier rates and routes and produce labels for pretty much every carrier in the world and growing rapidly. We, there are some people that that's, that's great, but it stops at exactly that.
I can only produce labels. I can't talk to an Arduino. I can't talk to an ESP 32. I can't talk to five different WMS systems. And what our software does is comes and plugs in there and gives you a controlled environment to set up and define those interfaces, all the things that you expect in a high-end product, uh, such as change control, uh, the ability is to do QA. Independently. So if you have five projects going, you can QA each one of them to approve and put into production as different sites will be on different timelines.
Lori Boyer 13:13
Skaistis you have anything to add to that?
Jeff Skaistis 13:15
Yeah, another differentiator is that with EasyPost Enterprise, we have a very flexible deployment model.
We can deploy into cloud-based environments, or we can actually host the software for you. Or if you want to actually, if you want to employ EasyPost Enterprise in your own premise, either on-premise and data center or in your own private cloud environment, we can support that as well. For some companies, that's an important factor because of data security and performance concerns.
Lori Boyer 13:44
Yeah, absolutely. Um, I'm glad you brought up security because that is a question and is a really big deal for, um, larger companies. So, appreciate that. Okay, so we talked kind of about the difference between EasyPost and EasyPost Enterprise.
How then is EasyPost Enterprise different than maybe the other offerings that are already out there in the enterprise space?
Jeff Goeters 14:03
So security, you mentioned, that's a very popular topic. That's something that generally every company that comes to us, you know, has a 300-page security questionnaire.
This is something that smaller companies can't afford to do. Uh, we are well equipped to keep all those things in line for you and offer the same extension into a customer's warehouse. So if they have data security issues, they want to make sure that they're protected if they want armed guards, fine. Have them put them around your data center. We'll give you a box you can run inside your physical premise. And with that, there's, there's no parallel to that in the industry.
Lori Boyer 14:44
I love that. Skaistis you have anything to add?
Jeff Skaistis 14:46
Yeah. I think another aspect, you know, compared to some, you know, big competitors is the fact that this is at its core, a new product built in new technologies and new, new capabilities, whereas some of the other competitor projects, products may be suffering from age as software can do at some times. So we're really excited because that gives us a lot of opportunity not to just build what has been built before, but, you know, building the new things for the future. We've got a solid platform to be able to do that on in a relatively, you know, short timeframe. So again, it just provides a lot of opportunities for us and our customers.
Lori Boyer 15:24
I love that you put the word new in the same sentence as our industry, because honestly, I mean, we're all part of the industry, but we're not always the most cutting edge industry in terms of getting new technology and, and staying up to date with the latest and greatest. And so that is super, super important. Um, yesterday's logistics industry has totally different needs than today's and into the future.
Jeff Skaistis 15:54
Absolutely, and I've, I've, I've been witness to that over, over time.
Lori Boyer 15:58
I know, for sure. Um, so Skaistis you've been around. It sounds like, you know, I'm. Nobody's accused me of being a mathematician, but 32 years, so you probably started in the logistics industry around 1387 or something, right? Okay, so, um, I know that EasyPost Enterprise was originally created as a direct response to challenges of, you know, large-scale shippers, large-volume shippers in the industry. What are some of the kind of unique challenges that these enterprise-size shippers face?
Jeff Skaistis 16:32
You know, a lot of it comes down to, you know, there's some, you know, obvious things like performance in terms of just by sheer volume system has to support, you know, hundreds of thousands of transactions, you know, per day, or even sometimes even more, and to be able to have a reliable platform to be able to do your shipping because, you know, for these companies, shipping is a business-critical operation, you can't have your shipping system go down for a couple hours a day and expect to make your numbers.
So, we need to make sure that our, our platform is reliable, that the system works, you can do what you need to do, even maybe if, you know, the circumstances aren't perfect, you're, you're, you're having to deal with maybe switching carriers around quickly or something like that, you know, we have to be able to respond to, uh, to do that.
Uh, the other thing is just, you know, as we've kind of already talked about is integration, you know, large organizations have lots of different software systems that they need to be dealing with, be it ERPs or WMS systems. And we have to be able to integrate with those in a manner that, you know, we can make the entire process work end to end.
Lori Boyer 17:38
Ah, that's fantastic. Goeters, do you have anything to add to that? Any other challenges you see with large sales, large scale shippers?
Jeff Goeters 17:45
Oh, there's many. It's kind of an endless discussion. The types of things you ship to can make a big difference. When you're shipping internationally, when you're doing export shipments, there's a lot of compliance components in there.
Uh, AES direct filings is one of them. We're a newly certified AES direct vendor, so we can provide those. Uh, line items that EU now requires harmonized tariff codes and any shipments going there. Uh, hazardous materials, dangerous goods is another one, a very complex subject to keep everyone safe. Uh, anything that is, um, unique.
So say you're a 3PL and you have a hundred different customers. Well, you have a hundred different pack slips. They all want customizations. They want to be able to print happy birthday messages. Uh, today people want to text in their orders. They're going to put emojis. And how many document systems can handle emoji text on their pack list? Well, we can. So as those kinds of challenges come up, we're ready for them.
Lori Boyer 18:38
That's awesome. So let's talk about that a little bit more. Um, and I had to say when you were mentioning, um, Skaistis about the, the potential of reliability and downtime. I was at a warehouse not long ago chatting with a customer and they had had some disruption and it had to do with the carrier.
But, um, thousands of packages were just piling up everywhere, and the nightmare that created when you're going large scale, um, I mean, it, it was daunting to me just to see it. I wanted to run home and, and hide in my bed of the thoughts of how are they going to catch up when some sort of disruption occurs.
So, I just completely can understand and, and relate to that. Um, so, Goeters, how does EasyPost Enterprise, you were starting to talk about this a little bit, so, Big companies, large volume shippers, they have a, you know, just a much higher degree of complexity. How does EasyPost Enterprise specifically address those challenges?
Jeff Goeters 19:41
Well, we talked about data security is a very big one. So we're one of the first systems. Because we're designed from scratch, and not recycling old things, we can protect PII a little bit differently. So we can identify PII that comes in, uh, PII is personally identifiable information or something that an identity thief might want to steal.
Protect it and highlight it and carry it through so that, you know, log files don't reflect sensitive information. Uh, when we go into a place that has Privacy Act laws, uh, California Privacy Act or GDPR over in EU, we can make sure that data is encapsulated and contained and given the appropriate safeguards, encrypted at rest and so forth.
So that's one thing that, you know, a lot of other products will just throw it in the database and hope that it works and we take it a lot more seriously. And if you need that data to fly, to float between four or five different clouds for redundancy on multiple continents. We can make that happen as well.
We can do it in our own cloud host, or we can work with on-site staff to make sure that data is there.
Lori Boyer 20:47
So when we talk about cloud, so I know that cloud is huge. Really big in the industry. I also know some companies, I think that you kind of referred to this earlier, are a little anxious about cloud. So does EasyPost Enterprise offer both on-prem and cloud options? How does that work?
Jeff Skaistis 21:07
Yes, we do. Um, you know, it's it's really kind of been an interesting trend. You know, I'd say even, you know, less than 10 years ago, like 7 or 8 years ago, no one wanted to have their shipping system in the cloud. It was always going to be on-prem and or in their own controlled environment.
And then maybe 5 or 6 years ago, it almost seemed like it was like overnight. It did a 180 where now everyone's wanting to see if they can host it because, you know, it's one of those things that, you know, from-from a customer's perspective, it can be cost-effective to do so. And, you know, for complex systems, especially so, you know, 1 of the main goals in the design of EasyPost Enterprise is that flexibility.
So you know, we can host it for you in our cloud. You can host it in your cloud. You can actually install it on a physical server in your warehouse if you want to. So it's just a matter of your needs as a customer and how, you know, yeah. Again, your, your own, you know, uh, IT policies, security policies, performance concerns, lots of different factors that play into it, but, you know, we can support all of those.
Lori Boyer 22:09
That's really cool. Goeters, I wanted to ask, earlier Skaistis had kind of mentioned growing companies, um, companies that maybe are on the precipice of becoming the, what they would consider large scale. What kind of support or maybe even guidance do you, if they're wanting to know more about maybe how they should do their settings or what kind of, I guess I'm asking for customer support kind of options are there around EasyPost Enterprise to help these, both the growing and the large scale shippers?
Jeff Goeters 22:41
That's a great question, Lori. So along with the Jeff and I and our history, we employ a number of professional services integrators who have similar, you know, 10, 15-year tenures, which is pretty unheard of in any software product. That are experienced and have been to hundreds, if not thousands of warehouses that have answered those types of questions over a plurality of ranges of needs.
And if someone needs our support, we have those people there. We can do, you know, 24/7 worldwide. We'll fly anywhere, do anything to give them, uh, an experienced technician that has answered those questions. If they don't need that type of talent. We have a Wiki software that, uh, a Wiki platform that'll give 'em whatever we would teach our own people about the software. How do you configure it? What does this setting do? What does that setting do? They can self help. They can call in on our support line. They can chat with us. We are open to making sure that they feel loved all the time. Uh, we know that a lot of logistics operations are 24/7, and we're dedicated to helping them through that.
Lori Boyer 23:49
I love that. One thing that as, you know, I, I get to interview, it's honestly just an honor that I get to interview so many super, super smart people in the industry here on this show. And one thing I've heard before is, that's critical in this industry, is to meet people where they're at. And that sounds kind of exactly what you guys have been talking about in terms of cloud versus on prem or the type of level of support that they get.
So is that something that you would agree with? Um, either of you on that EasyPost Enterprise kind of meets the customers and clients where they're at, and it's and it's super customizable and flexible to them.
Jeff Skaistis 24:25
Absolutely. I mean, that's again. One of the main points is, is that it's designed to solve their problem.
I mean, whatever, whatever the use cases or the scenario is. We likely have a solution either, if not quite built-in, it's something that we can build as part of integration very easily. And so, you know, Jeff mentioned, you know, custom documents and things like that. We have a, you know, a very, uh, you know, full feature document builder user interface that if a customer so chooses, they could actually use that to you know, do their own customizations and shipping labels or build other documents standalone and things like that. So, to solve those kinds of issues that they need, you know, it makes it, you know, if they don't have that capability, then it's something that we can do for them. So, again, there's a broad range of what we can do or what we can help them do themselves.
Lori Boyer 25:19
Goeters, do you have anything to add to that?
Jeff Goeters 25:23
I could spend hours.
Jeff Skaistis 25:27
The reality is that Jeff and I could probably talk about this for days.
Lori Boyer 25:32
Well, let's talk about objections then. Okay, so you are obviously here. You've been in the industry forever. You're super excited about this new, you know, cool, innovative product. People are going to be a little bit skeptical. So what do you feel like, Goeters, are some of the common objections, that companies might have or reasons that they might be worried about, um, swapping?
Jeff Goeters 25:55
Well, we try to address in technical design, as that's kind of what I do, some of the concerns, like we talked about how to deploy it.
And the reason we can deploy on such a wide thing, a wide range of systems, is it's a container deployment. So, in previous lives, it's like, well, okay, we're a Windows platform, and now you need to play with my antivirus software and my IDS software, and, hey, look, half your files are gone. Why is my shipping system not working?
And so now that containers are more accepted methodology that I hand you a certified black box literally that you can run on any platform in any cloud or locally or whatever else. We've done our QA, we've done our checks, we have our source control, we have all of the change management that we need for our security certifications.
We put that in. Now you have something that is unbreakable. As long as that container remains intact, right, you're going to keep shipping. Your database will hold your configuration settings, of course, but we have our technicians to help with that. So you're no longer in a fragile world where if antivirus gets hacked or something and deletes half your files, you're done shipping for that with us.
Nope. Here's your container. There you go. You're up again.
Lori Boyer 27:07
Perfect. Skaistis, what else?
Jeff Skaistis 27:10
I think, you know, it's, it's also a matter of, you know, there are customers who, you know. Again, kind of going back to the cloud thing. And, you know, how do we interact with on-premise systems, um, in that environment? Because, you know, it's some customers and especially with, you know, automation equipment or something like that.
That's going to be living probably on-premise in the warehouse, but we're hosted in the cloud. How do we communicate with that? And we have basically technology we call a cloud bridge that allows you to essentially, you know, operate your EasyPost Enterprise system in the cloud, either, you know, our hosted cloud or your private cloud, but still be able to securely communicate with systems on-premises. Databases or file shares or whatever else that you might need to communicate with, that's all done in a secure, reliable fashion.
And so that gives, you know, it. You don't, you don't, you know, even in those cases where you've got a widely dispersed system, you know, we have the capability to handle those kinds of connectivity.
Lori Boyer 28:11
Very cool. Um, so Goeters, I think you mentioned the tech stack earlier and just integrations and whatnot.
That's obviously always a big concern. What, what else? Is there anything else you can share on that topic that would maybe alleviate those concerns for people listening?
Jeff Goeters 28:29
Well, we talked about that we have a Wiki available so people can look at the documentation. We, uh, one of the other great things that I took great pride in when I started working with EasyPost is we publish our uptime.
You can go to our status page and see in real time if we're down. And others will hide it or bury it or, oh, it's a planned maintenance event. Oh, it wasn't planned when it was out. We publish our stats. We publish how well we do. We take it very, very seriously. If there is ever a problem with our cloud, we have multiple points and data centers.
Um, we'll show you the fears like you're afraid of downtime. No problem. Here, look at my record. And we hope to extend that to, uh, as far as we can onto premise that we can give you references. We have some amazing clients that will happily say, yeah, I've been using these, you know, what Jeff said is right.
I've been using them for 10 years and this stuff is, uh, solid. So we'll show you if a customer has a specific fear. I, of course, don't think we have that much to worry about, but if you have one, tell us what it is and we'll get your reference. This is yes, we know what we're doing.
Lori Boyer 29:36
That is something I've been really impressed with here at EasyPost.
As I've worked with the executive leadership, that focus on transparency and that focus on, you know, being up front with customers and with everyone. And I'm also, I, you mentioned uptime um, Skaistis. Is there anything that we're doing specifically that, you know, how is the uptime so good? And, you know, what can, what could people expect in terms of uptime with this product?
Jeff Skaistis 30:06
I mean, for, I mean, our goal is to have, you know, we'll say zero downtime. And what that means is that, you know, if it's, if you're not doing active maintenance on the system, it should just stay running. And so that, that's the goal. And we're, you know, we've got the technology in place to be able to support that.
You know, that doesn't always happen because maybe there's something external affecting it and those kinds of things. But those are situations you kind of have to, it's almost kind of a, you have to learn as you go, because every environment is going to be a bit different in terms of, you know, how things behave and things like that.
So, there's always some adjustments to be made, but that's, you know, that's, you know, by far the goal is to have a system that, you know, as Jeff said, you drop a container and you turn it on and it's just going to keep running and doing what it needs to do. Um, and, you know, we've spent a lot of time, you know, kind of down in down in the weeds to make sure that that, that kind of thing can happen.
And it's, this is probably, I mean, and I'm, and again, I've seen a lot of, I've got, I've seen a lot of shipping systems. Uh, over the years, and this is by far in terms of, you know, what we can do in terms of reliability, the most reliable thing I've ever dealt with, for sure, so.
Lori Boyer 31:11
That's fantastic. Goeters, one other question that I know that we get from people is, what does that process look like for onboarding if they were going, you know, if a company was like, okay, I want to give this a try, is there a timeframe, what can they expect, uh, what, what can you share about that?
Jeff Goeters 31:30
Well, obviously it's a somewhat seasonal business, so I can't say it's going to take a day or take a week. Uh, we do give you a professional salesperson that can do pre-sales questions. Say, how could we address this? What would it cost if we did this? We'll answer, sometimes getting even to the pseudocode level, to say, Okay, if you want a routing table, here's how we could lay that out and whiteboard it up and draw flowcharts to make sure that we understand what they're asking of us, if there is something that we need to build for them.
If we can deal with just the product as it is, hook it up to database tables and so forth, it's usually a pretty painless process and there's not a lot of questions on board. If there's an account problem, hey, UPS didn't enable my, you know, internet export service or this, uh, we can work through them pretty quickly as we have a pretty good contact list with every carrier worldwide, uh, almost every carrier worldwide, but in the U.S. I can pretty confidently say that we can get to any level of help that we need to get whatever service was offered to them by that carrier.
Lori Boyer 32:32
It kind of goes back to that where you talked about meeting them where they're at and the flexibility, I guess, is, you know, where every system could be slightly different and customized.
So the onboarding process may be more dependent on what that particular customer is wanting and how fast that they probably need to get it up. Would you say that's right, Skaistis?
Jeff Skaistis 32:52
Yeah, I think a lot of it is because every situation is different. For instance, you know, if we're integrating with, um, you know, another enterprise system like a WMS, there may be, uh, the WMS third party integrators involved that we're working with and those kinds of things, which you know, maybe have their own schedule. And so it's, it's a matter of making sure that, you know, we've kind of, we kind of joke when we're going into these projects is that we always want to make sure that you're with that, you know, that we're waiting on you instead of the other way around. So that's, you know, that's kind of, that's, that's our mindset is that we want to make sure that, you know, we're, we have our stuff ready to go and, and then we're waiting on you to, you know, start, start talking to us.
Lori Boyer 33:31
Okay, I want now, um, to talk a little bit. I want you to pull out your crystal balls. It's time for us to like envision the future, look into the future. So where do you, Goeters, see the large volume shipping industry kind of going in the future? Um, where, where would you guess? Is this going to become bigger, more complex?
Are we going to size down? Where there's going to be more fragmentation? Where do you see that? And how do you feel like EasyPost Enterprise is positioned to meet whatever that demand is as we go forward?
Jeff Goeters 34:06
Lori, that's a deeply philosophical question.
Lori Boyer 34:09
Those are my favorite questions, Jeff. I love philosophy.
Jeff Goeters 34:13
Six days of answer. So as best as I can shorten it down to the time of this podcast, I would say that it's going to become a prerequisite to use software like EasyPost. I know there's others out there and they're, they're going to stay out there, but things, what customers are expecting today. The things that the industry is pushed for where it's like, okay, I want to give you a door code to just the driver.
I don't want to put it on my web form or it could be stolen by the terrorists. I want to be able to SMS, you know, when I'm, the driver's two blocks away so I can go out and get it, make sure we don't get it. Um, we didn't talk about, you know, the other aspects that EasyPost covers, like porch piracy insurance, that's part of our platform.
Um, the comprehensiveness of all these little pieces. We have, lockers are now a thing in America where I want to go pick it up from, you know, I'm going to go to the hardware store and I want to grab my package there because it's, you know, a 1,000 dollar iPhone and I don't want it stolen. Um, there's so many things.
You're going to need a package like ours that encompasses multiple people from multiple industries to bring the solution together in house and make it affordable. You're not going to have time to go shop 75 different packages, which you're going to need. to do all the things that a customer expects in ecommerce today.
Lori Boyer 35:29
Skaistis, how do you feel like EasyPost Enterprise is going to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to innovation and making sure that we do meet all these needs that Goeters mentioned?
I said before that sometimes our industry is a little slow when it comes to picking up new technology. EasyPost, I know, really wants to not be that way. How are they going to do that, Skaistis?
Jeff Skaistis 35:53
I think that, you know, a lot of that comes from, it comes from our customers. I mean, our customers, you know, in working with their carriers, the carriers have gotten more and more creative over the years in terms of how, what kind of solutions they offer.
And then they offer those to their customers, and then it's kind of up to us then to be able to implement something to support that solution. And it's, you know, it's always a challenge, because, you know, Carrier may have done something one way for 20 years, and all of a sudden tomorrow, now it's completely different, because they've decided, either because of a competitive reason or for cost savings or something like that, they're going to do it differently.
And, you know, us, you know, from our perspective, that's something now that we need to be able to support and deal with. And again, it goes back to what we've built with EasyPost Enterprise. It's something that is flexible enough that we can turn those things around quickly. It's, it's not something that's been locked in stone forever and ever, and we're going to have to go back and redo things from scratch every time something changes.
It's designed to, to change over time. It's designed to be flexible as things, as things move forward and things change. And that's where I think we really have an advantage to, uh, you know, some of the other systems out there and that we can do that quickly. We can do that cost-effectively and with, you know, we'll say, you know, a minimum, a minimum of challenge on our part.
Lori Boyer 37:11
Legacy systems are going to continue to age and, and really just weren't necessarily set up originally to meet the emerging needs, you know.
Jeff Skaistis 37:20
And I'll, I'll, I'll plug part of what we have as a product offering at EasyPost Enterprise is something that specifically targets legacy systems. So those customers are out there on older systems, not overplayed over, you know, still working, still running, but we have the capabilities to communicate with those and interact with those.
And we can, we can make, you know, build solutions using our new technology talking to that old technology.
Lori Boyer 37:43
Oh, that's super cool. I wasn't aware of that. That's awesome. Okay, each of you we are just about at the end of time. It's about time to wrap up. If you have a piece of advice one or two pieces of advice for large scale shippers What would you recommend that they start looking at or how could they prepare to implement something like EasyPost Enterprise or just general advice even of things that they can do to make sure they're positioning themselves well. Let's start with Skaistis and then we'll end with Goeters.
Jeff Skaistis 38:13
I think, you know, one of the things that shippers are doing more of now, which is great is shopping around with their carriers.
I mean, before it was, you know, it seems like customer would kind of pick a carrier and then they'd be locked in for, you know, four or five years just because they didn't want to have to deal with it again. That time, you know, that timeline shrink is shrinking where they're, they're doing that evaluation you know, every couple of years, every year, even, you know, multiple times a year to see if they can make, you know, change their carrier mix. And so that's why our system like EasyPost Enterprise becomes important because. If you need to shift your carriers right in the middle of peak or something like that, we can do it because we have that capability.
Lori Boyer 38:49
Yeah. It's so true. There are so many variables going on with shippers, I mean, with carriers all the time. Everything, you know, we've seen strikes and, and weather-related problems.
Jeff Skaistis 39:01
And, you know, a couple of years ago, carrier capacity was a huge concern and, you know, being able to do that, you know, being able to have a system in place that could, you know, either monitor the capacity or shift loads as needed is, is, is important.
Lori Boyer 39:14
Goeters, what's your advice?
Jeff Goeters 39:17
My advice is something that I learned as an entrepreneur the hard way, and that's that you can't do it alone. So if you are an up-and-coming shipper, the reason that we have a professional services team, we have an entire consulting team available to talk to them about everything in their warehouse that have been through it hundreds of times and are happy to talk about how solutions have worked for other customers.
And how they could be adapted to work for them. So you don't need to worry about how you're going to schedule that pickup or how you're going to get that audit report or how you're going to get that dashboard available so you don't get fired. We are the people that can connect you to all the pieces and parts, whether we have them, whether it's a third party or whether it's just technologies in-house that you know, they might not even know. We've been through it before. We want to help them. We only succeed when they succeed.
Lori Boyer 40:05
Okay, Goeters, if people want to learn more about EasyPost Enterprise, where can they go to do that?
Jeff Goeters 40:39
Easypost.com/enterprise.
Lori Boyer 40:41
Pretty, pretty straightforward. Okay, and Skaistis, are you on LinkedIn or both of you? If anybody wants to follow you, glean a little bit more of this decades of experience in the industry. Is there somewhere they can follow you?
Jeff Skaistis 40:56
Yeah. Feel free to follow me on LinkedIn. Uh, I know it's, it's, it's one of those, it's one of those things that, you know, I'll occasionally drop nuggets of wisdom out there and if anybody enjoys it, you know, they can, or, but more importantly, if somebody has any questions or wants to ping me on something, that's a great way to do it.
Lori Boyer 41:15
Perfect. Goeters, are you on LinkedIn?
Jeff Goeters 41:17
I'm on LinkedIn too. I post occasionally until my lawyers tell me to take it down.
Lori Boyer 41:23
Okay, awesome. We'll include those links down here in the description. It has been an absolute pleasure having both of you. I love working with people of your high caliber and I love the way that you are able to simply and eloquently really describe what EasyPost Enterprise is.
So thank you so much. Community, if you have any questions, of course, always reach out. If you have topic ideas or if there are certain people you want me to interview here on the show, just reach out and let me know. I'm happy to do that. And make sure that you, uh, follow and, and like and subscribe. But we'll see you all next time. Thank you, Jeffs.