Multicarrier parcel management solutions help companies select the appropriate (best) parcel carrier from among all contracted carriers based on order characteristics (such as weight and dimensional properties), delivery rules (such as delivery time and delivery zone) and carrier performance, while considering the cost differentials of various carrier offerings. These tools also enable shippers to manage the creation of labels, create shipper manifests, provide status messages to customers or customer service representatives, and manage carrier rates. Parcel management has become a necessary, complementary part to the multimodal TMS and WMS offerings. TMS, as well as WMS vendors, partner with the parcel vendors to expand the capability in their own toolset — as most TMS vendors have no plans to develop this capability themselves and most WMS providers' capabilities in this space are limited.