Your Customers Expect Amazon-Style Tracking. Here's How to Give It to Them.
Your B2B customers track their personal Amazon orders on a live map. Then they call your office to ask where their $200K purchase order is. The expectation gap is a competitive problem.
The $200K purchase order with zero visibility
Your customer orders a $12 phone case from Amazon. They get a map with real-time position, push notifications at every milestone, and a delivery photo. They never call anyone.
The next morning, that same person places a $200,000 PO with your company. When they want status, they call your shipping coordinator. The coordinator logs into Epicor, finds the pack slip, copies a tracking number, checks UPS.com, and calls the customer back. Round trip: 15 minutes.
This is the reality for most manufacturers. The expectation gap between consumer shipping and B2B shipping is enormous, and it's getting worse.
15 minutes per call, 20 calls per day, $45K per year
The math on status calls is ugly:
- Customer calls or emails asking for status (2-3 minutes to understand what they need)
- Coordinator finds the pack slip or sales order in Epicor (3-5 minutes)
- Coordinator copies tracking number, checks carrier website (2-3 minutes)
- For ocean freight, coordinator logs into a separate container platform (3-5 minutes)
- Coordinator relays the information back by phone or email (3-5 minutes)
What a self-service portal actually looks like
A tracking portal gives your customers a URL they can visit to check status without contacting your team. The bar is not high. It needs to show:
- Real-time carrier status (in transit, out for delivery, delivered)
- Map showing the shipment route and current position
- Milestone timeline with timestamps
- No login required. No account creation.
- Your company branding, not a third-party logo
ERP-native portals vs. standalone tracking tools
Generic tracking tools require you to export data from your ERP and import it into their platform. This creates a sync problem. Your portal's always slightly out of date because it runs on a batch process.
An ERP-native portal reads directly from your Epicor data in real time. When a pack slip is created, the portal updates instantly. No sync lag. No stale data. Your customer checks UPS.com and your portal, and the status matches.
That consistency matters. The moment your portal shows a different status than the carrier site, your customer stops trusting it and goes back to calling your office.
Amtrend cut status calls by 72% in one month
Amtrend, an FF&E manufacturer on Epicor Kinetic, deployed FreightPane and saw status inquiry calls drop 72% within 30 days. Their shipping coordinators got back hours every week that had been eaten up relaying tracking info by phone.
The math: 20 status calls/day at 15 minutes each = 5 hours/day = 25 hours/week. At $35/hour fully loaded, that's $45,500/year in labor spent on work a portal eliminates. FreightPane pays for itself in the first billing cycle.
One click to share any shipment
FreightPane generates a branded tracking page for every shipment in your Epicor system. One click creates a URL you can share by email, text, or CRM. Your customer opens it, sees real-time status, and moves on with their day.