UPS Certified Shipping Provider for Wineries, Wine Clubs and Shopping Cart Purchases

Livermore, CA - April 18, 2011: - Shipping wine is not like many other products and the Certified Integration Partnership between Active Club Management and UPS has been the longest standing certified integration in the wine industry.

Active Club Management continues to provide wineries and all the Active Club Management clients with solutions that out performs others. For years other companies have made wineries export customer lists to other software solutions and failed to step up to be certified "UPS Ready®". We are happy to see the wineries and wine stores being offered better solution but the UPS Ready program is not enough.

The shipping costs go well beyond the ability to print labels. We feel that the shipping solution must provide the following:

1. Real time shipping rates. The real-time rates would provide negotiated rates for each specific package. The rates would represent the rates for that day. Although UPS does not change rate but once or twice a year they do change the surcharges on the first Monday of each month. Surcharges can dramatically impact the cost of shipping a package and estimating those expenses can lose to significant losses. Manually having to track those changes in "surcharges" is time consuming. The software should do that work for you and you should know that the work was performed accurately.
2. Package tracking with notification of any failure: We pay to ship a package and we pay a second time if a package fails delivery and needs to be returned. We pay for shipping a third time when we try to ship the package again and we bare the cost of repackaging new wine for the 2nd package being shipped.
   
         a. A simple notification of a failed package is not enough. All notifications of failure should be accompanies by the notes of the driver as to why the package delivery failed. Was there a security gate without a code? Does the recipient not work there anymore? Did the recipient move? All of these are real examples seen by Active Club Management that would surely cause wineries and wine stores return shipping and re-shipping fees.
3. Intelligent Printing of Labels: All too often we see club mangers printing shipping labels without taking the time to separate out the club packages that have not been paid for and those which are not being shipped. With other software programs those tasks are left to eh memory and accuracy of the club manager. And with the busy schedules we all keep the losses can add up in shipping fees and customer frustration.
   
   With Active Club Management that won't be the case. Active Club Management has the intelligence to not print labels for people who want to pick up their club release and for sales that have not been paid for. And, if you want to ship a package that is normally a pick-up or ship and invoice the customer you can choose to do that as well. Not only will the cost of shipping decrease but the customer satisfaction will increase as the packages that are identified as "pick-up" will be waiting in the tasting room for the club members when they come to pick them up.
4. Automated Weather Tracking: Shipping a package to locations where the temperatures could ruin a wine happens all too often. The worst case is that the customer does not know if is ruined and they think you have bad wine. In this case you lose a customer for life. On the other hand if a customer informs you that wine was impacted by the weather you end up packaging new wine and paying a second time for shipping. This is not a shipment which is insured by the shipper for weather damage so it adds up being lost time, customer frustration and lost revenue for the wineries and wine store.
   
   With Active Club Management the delivery days of each package are determined. Then the 7 day forecast for each destination is compared to the "favorable temperatures" set by the winery. When any of the forecasts are outside of the favorable temperatures the wineries immediately sees the problem and can re-package the wine for the weather, select a different delivery method or hold the package for a future and more favorable delivery. Additionally, Active Club Management can also make it easy for the winery to email a personal message to the recipient and senders updating them with the current status.
   
   There is a lot more to gain and lose when shipping products so we encourage all businesses to take a close look at how your club solution and shopping cart solution can help you recover those losses.