Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
This blog was contributed by ProShip, Inc.
When most people think about automation, they picture the visible pieces — sorters, scanners, and winding conveyor lines moving packages from point A to point B. And while that hardware is critical for speed and efficiency, it’s only half the story. The true heart of automation is what you don’t see: the digital automation, controls, and software that coordinate every piece of equipment and turn motion into intelligence. This unseen layer is what enables real-time decision-making, from routing and rate shopping to error prevention and system optimization. It’s also why companies that pair physical automation with transportation and control software consistently see faster payback and stronger ROI.
What most don’t see are the processes making intelligent shipping decisions in real-time behind the scenes: digital automation. From carrier selection to rate shopping and label generation, these workflows are responsible for ensuring packages move with accuracy in just milliseconds. When physical and digital automation work together, they create a seamless fulfillment experience that maximizes speed, reduces costs, and keeps operations flowing.
Keep reading this blog to explore how the physical and digital pieces intersect and why integrated automation is essential for businesses to power a competitive fulfillment operation in today’s logistics environment.
Where Automation Fits in the Fulfillment Journey
The rise in e-commerce has made online shopping as simple as the click of a button. However, what happens after the consumer clears their cart is far more complex. Order fulfillment involves multiple steps, each requiring precision and speed to meet the customer’s expectations, and automation (hardware + software) is a cornerstone at each part of the journey.
- Order Processing: After an order is placed, it enters the system and triggers software automation to verify details, check inventory for availability, and route the order to the best-fit fulfillment center.
- Picking and Packing: During this stage, physical automation such as conveyors, sorters, and scanners is incorporated to move products through the warehouse, while automation software checks items for accuracy and confirms packaging requirements are met.
- Shipping and Delivery: When the order is packed and ready to depart the warehouse, digital automation takes center stage. Pre-defined business rules are applied during rate shopping to select the most cost-effective, best-fit carrier and service level. It is also at this stage where the physical hardware automation performs tasks such as weights, dimensions, labeling and carrier sortation.
By utilizing integrated processes between physical and digital automation, shippers create a seamless fulfillment journey, delivering both efficiency and accuracy.
Physical Automation: The Warehouse Hardware
Physical hardware is the key to moving products through the warehouse. Automated systems like conveyors, scanning stations, and sorters ensure that packages move efficiently without the need for manual work. StreamTech specializes in material handling systems integration, designing and managing cutting-edge automation solutions including:
- Parcel Sortation and Conveyors: StreamTech’s sortation systems and conveyor ensures packages move smoothly throughout the warehouse, from small parcels to long boxes and flats. These intelligent systems ensure packages flow to the correct carrier, zone, or order type, even during periods of high-volume.
- Picking: With robotic and light-guided picking technology, inventory is accurately selected and moved to the correct bin or picking station. This minimizes the reliance on manual labor or the need to memorize item locations, increasing the speed and accuracy of this step in the fulfillment process.
- Pack Automation: After picking is completed, pack automation solutions provide on-demand box building, right-sized cartons, and automated case erectors and tapers. This reduces repetitive, labor-intensive tasks, ensures each box is packed efficiently and sealed correctly, and significantly reduces material waste.
- Print and Apply Shipping: When the order reaches the final step, StreamTech automates the scanning, weighing, and labeling processes. This removes manual tasks while also reducing errors and costs. By integrating seamlessly with your multi-carrier shipping software, shippers can rate shop carriers in real-time, speed up manifesting processes, and scale efficiently during peak demand.
StreamTech’s suite of warehouse technology ensures each package is picked, packed, labeled, and sorted with accuracy and speed. The hardware automation they provide lays a solid foundation for fulfillment, however, they don’t do it alone. While the hardware keeps packages moving, digital automation is where the software makes key decisions.
Digital Automation: The Warehouse Software
Integrating physical automation to work in sync with intelligent software is where true efficiency is achieved. ProShip delivers advanced mutli-carrier shipping software (MCSS) for enterprise businesses, enabling critical shipping decisions in real-time. This comprehensive solution works behind the scenes, processing complex workflows to ensure operations can keep up with high-volume demands. ProShip’s digital automation provides several benefits to the fulfillment journey, including:
- Carrier Rate Shopping: ProShip’s MCSS offers various automated rate shopping functions including Basic, Time-in-Transit, and Advanced Date Shopping. By integrating your hardware with ProShip, shippers can access a vast library comprised of over 250 domestic and international carriers. Intelligent rate shopping evaluates several factors across carriers in real time, selecting the most cost-effective and best-fit carrier for every package.
- Business Rule Execution: ProShip’s solution is fully customizable to each unique business’s needs, giving shippers full control over their operations. Configurable business rules apply pre-defined criteria in automated decisions, accounting for preferences like delivery speed, costs, and customer requirements. This eliminates the need for manual data entry and ensures accuracy and high-speed shipment execution.
- Compliance Standards: By automating the creation and generation of carrier-compliant labels and necessary documentation in milliseconds, ProShip helps reduce labeling errors and avoid costly feeds. This ensures shippers can feel confident that each package meets carrier requirements without slowing down the fulfillment process.
- Scalability and Speed: ProShip’s software is designed for high-volume execution, built to process even the most complex shipping decisions at record speeds. With versionless architecture, MCSS updates are automatically made in real-time without the need for manual intervention or costly upgrades. By ensuring zero downtime and millisecond speeds, ProShip ensures operations remain uninterrupted, even during peak periods, so businesses can scale confidently while maintaining service performance, accuracy, and throughput.
The seamless integration between ProShip’s digital automation and StreamTech’s physical automation creates a streamlined fulfillment experience. Together, they eliminate operational bottlenecks, improve fulfillment accuracy, and offer a competitive advantage in the modern supply chain landscape.
The Intersection of Hardware + Software Automation in Fulfillment
A successful fulfillment operation isn’t dependent on either hardware or software, but the strong integration between both. As physical automation powers the swift movement of orders through the warehouse, digital automation makes crucial real-time decisions that prioritize accuracy and cost-efficiency. The partnership between StreamTech’s material handling technology and ProShip’s advanced multi-carrier shipping software empower businesses with a seamless, optimized fulfillment ecosystem.
Together, these powerful solutions drive significant benefits including minimizing errors, reducing manual labor, lowering costs, and improving scalability. When your hardware and software work hand-in-hand, businesses can avoid operational bottlenecks and optimize their fulfillment processes from conveyor to carrier, giving shippers the competitive edge they need to thrive in the fast-paced world of logistics.
Ready to optimize fulfillment? To learn more about how StreamTech and ProShip partner to achieve automated, efficient, and scalable fulfillment operations, contact our team to explore tailored automation solutions.
About ProShip
ProShip, the industry-leading multi-carrier shipping software solution, allows high-volume enterprise shippers to automate carrier service optimization (rate shopping), and easily build and manage complex business rules all within one carrier-agnostic system. ProShip seamlessly integrates with your existing WMS, OMS, ERP systems, and other automation processes, scaling as your business grows. With both on-platform and private cloud hosting deployment options, ProShip empowers enterprise shippers to streamline complex workflows, maintain carrier compliance, decrease IT dependency through continuous updates, and find a quick ROI. Trusted by leading brands, ProShip is the last shipping software you’ll ever need. Visit www.proshipinc.com to learn more.
