10 Things To Consider When Choosing A Transportation Management Software

Transportation Management Solutions are a must in today’s modern logistics and supplies chain processes. Their design philosophy is to aid in the planning, executing, and optimization of the physical movement of goods. Often times you will see it abbreviated as TMS, an Australian transport management system (or one for any other applicable region) helps to manage and organize the flow and distribution of goods and services with maximum efficiency. It automates various processes and enables the management team to receive valuable insights to save time and reduce costs on future shipments.

The global TMS market size is expected to grow from USD 7.7 billion in 2020 to USD 17.8 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 18.2%. Some of the most critical use cases of TMS are simplifying the carrier selection process, tracking freight in transit, in-depth insights, and reporting capabilities to make routing decisions based on quotes, transit time, and carrier mix. TMS solution assists in the planning and coordination of shipping, tracking, and delivering freight. It helps manage the carrier rates, contracts, booking, tracking, billing, payment, auditing, and settlement. Moreover, it ensures that the incoming and outgoing shipment is compliant and proper documentation is available.

To choose suitable software for a transport company, here are a few things that you need to consider.

Business Needs

You must primarily analyze your business needs to identify the entry points for the transportation management software. Identify your workflow and the work processes you need to automate.

Integration

Choose a TMS solution that can integrate easily into your existing infrastructure. Analyze the software’s capability to function with the current operations and across the range of hardware, software, and network. You can deploy cloud-based management software to reduce the need for physical infrastructure.

Customization

Ask your vendor if you can customize the software to meet the demands of your logistics and transportation operations. It should include functions and templates that are highly configurable and suitable to your workflow.

Scalability

Ensure that the Transportation Management Software offers either a building block or modular approach to enable you to scale and add functionalities as and when required. Your business capability is likely to expand over time, and if you integrate a scalable solution, you can onboard more employees and increase your working capacity quickly. You can easily adapt to changes, upgrades, overhauls, and resource reduction. Hence, it becomes easier to meet the fluctuating needs of your business with scalable software that you can expand or upgrade on-demand.

Secure Regulatory Compliance

Maintenance of compliance is essential for any business. Choose software that aligns you with the standard transportation policies and contracts. The compliance management feature will enable you to stay in line with federal, state, and local regulations and keep your employees trained on critical protocols and procedures. It helps you eliminate the operational risk and optimize profitability by avoiding costly errors in various areas, including maintenance, driver logs, and driver records.

Easy Accessibility

If you choose to deploy your TMS solution on the cloud, you can easily carry out the different processes from on-premise or remote servers. It allows you to store information in a central location that can be accessed easily by authorized employees without interruption.

Moreover, it is easier to integrate new features in a cloud-based solution. Hence, you do not have to limit your capabilities that are inherent to traditional IT departments. The main features of cloud-based software are easy collaboration and sharing of data to optimize, plan and execute inbound and outbound product movement. Other features include easy management of updates, integration between different systems, and multi-location deployment.

Budget

Budget is an important parameter while choosing a TMS solution. You can perform a cost-benefit analysis to determine if the software will help you to generate a higher ROI. It should enable end-to-end transparency and accountability within logistics. You can approach a few vendors and assess the software solution’s features and choose a solution packaged in an appropriate pricing model.

Remember Your Customers

Ensure that the software will enable you to deliver timely and accurate customer communication. The software can integrate a secure, online portal to allow customers to access freight status and customer care services in real-time. If you need to work with numerous companies, a good multi-carrier software such as Go3G will also allow you to easily access your carriers’ information and data via a web portal to ensure an accurate overview at all times.

Be Business Intelligent

Hence, technology has advanced significantly, choosing a software solution that provides business intelligence data such as deadhead percentage, revenue per loaded mile, and on-time percentage. It can include AI and ML tools to provide you with the best transport management solution.

Quality Of Technical Support

While choosing a TMS, choose a provider who can extend a timely and responsive level of support and orientation. Ensure that the vendor will support the software throughout the lifecycle before signing the service level agreement.

To Conclude:

Choosing a good TMS software will enable you to seamlessly deliver the goods on time, hence improving the customer support service. It will provide enhanced visibility into end-to-end shipments and will allow you to manage the operation workflow in the best possible manner, accordingly optimizing your business capability.