Plan, procure, execute, & track transportation for every shipment across your supply chain & logistics operations
A SaaS solution to help grow your business by achieving 100% perfect order execution at high volumes
Increase vehicle capacity utilization and customer promise adherence
Grow your business with omnichannel presence and automated pickups
Consolidate shipments for hub to hub movement across land and air
Real-time customer communications and collect accurate PODs
Orchestrate logistics operations with multiple 3rd party carriers
Achieve cost effective, scalable, sustainable, and customer centric deliveries
Orchestrate all your cross-border logistics operations with ease
Improve address accuracy, ensure first-attempt delivery success, reduce costs and boost customer experience
Gain end-to-end shipment visibility, get proactive alerts, and send customers live tracking links
Grow business in a dynamic world and manage operations across First, Middle & Last mile
Delight customers by seamlessly managing store and online orders across own fleet and 3rd party
Reduce freight costs & get end to end visibility across shipments
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In the digital world, agile logistics services hold a competitive advantage. But to achieve agility and accuracy across the logistics ecosystem, eCommerce businesses need extensive logistics planning, flawless execution, and coordination. Such functionalities are difficult to achieve with traditional systems.
Advanced transportation and logistics software allows eCommerce, dark stores, retailers, and last-mile delivery frameworks to achieve their purpose. Research suggests that the smart transportation and logistics solutions’ market size is projected to reach $ 34.78 Bn by 2029. As eCommerce, cross-border trading, and delivery markets boom, the need for intelligent logistics and transportation software will only increase.
Here, we will discuss the transportation and logistics software at length, explore their benefits, and discuss the key considerations for choosing the right transportation and logistics solution for your business.
In supply chain management, transportation means the movement of goods from one place to another using different means of transportation, like roads, water, and the sea. In contrast, logistics management deals with the inbound and outbound movement of goods from the point of origin to the point of consumption. It focuses on the supply and demand aspect of goods, starting from procurement to order fulfillment.
As made clear from the above discussion, both transportation and logistics go hand-in-hand, and if one lags, it can derail the other in terms of efficiency and productivity.
Next, we discuss the importance of managing these two components of the supply chain and logistics.
Logistics and transportation are two terms that are often used interchangeably, whereas transportation management is a subset of logistics. The former focuses on the complete order fulfillment process, while the latter looks after the movement of goods via different modes of transportation.
Transportation and logistics management holds equal importance in a business’s supply chain. Logistics handles warehousing, inventory management, labeling, packing, and order fulfillment. On the other hand, transportation looks after transporting raw materials and finished goods to the destination. Without efficient management of both these, a business might have to deal with issues like delayed deliveries, high costs, and customer dissatisfaction.
Transportation is one of the major operations of logistics management. Other key operations involved are:
Warehousing management deals with the storage of finished goods that are stored for the purpose of shipping. Warehouse managers aim to streamline their in-house processes in tandem with logistics management goals. To do so, they have to overcome challenges like shortage of labor, inefficient optimization of warehouse space, and meeting seasonal demands.
Inventory management involves dispatching the right product at the right time in the right quantity to customers. Accurate stock inventory records are necessary for a smooth flow of product deliveries. eCommerce companies that use TMS or LMS solutions successfully manage overstocking and understocking problems with predictive analytics. This also helps with dispatching the right orders in less time.
Packaging according to the nature of the product and mode of transportation helps keep products in prime condition. Usage of the right packaging method assures customers that the vendor values them. Similarly, labels provide appropriate handling guidelines to freight managers. The right packaging and labeling policies can significantly reduce breakage and mishandling.
Smart logistics and transportation software automates the process of label generation and make the entire process smoother, easier, better, and more efficient.
Once a customer places an order, the order is notified to concerned stakeholders. This keeps all the involved parties in the loop. Strategically planned order processing operations keep track of all significant milestones that fall between order placement to the successful execution of product delivery. Smart logistics software can overcome challenges like stockout, inaccurate recording of orders, and communication gaps with smart platforms.
Transportation management is a rigorous process. Logistics managers have to analyze carrier quotes, past success rates, offered transportation conditions, vehicle capacity, and more. eCommerce businesses deal with multiple carriers, which makes transportation operations complex.
Organizations that depend on outdated methods experience challenges like inefficient route planning, inappropriate vehicle capacity utilization, exorbitant fuel costs, and gaps in order allocation. Without a second thought, such organizations fail to deliver orders on time and incur extreme profit losses.
Inadequate focus on reverse logistics can drain out resources and margins. One researcher estimated the cost of return deliveries to be $550 bn in 2020. Apart from high operational costs, inefficient reverse logistics also adversely affect the environment and customer experience. Organizations can reduce costs and enhance the productivity of their riders by deploying smart transportation and logistics software.
Transportation and logistics software is a platform that automates operations such as order processing, assigning drivers, allocating vehicles, utilizing vehicles’ capacity, order tracking, and others involved in transportation and logistics management. The software leverages technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, the internet of things, and more to improve logistical efficiency, customer satisfaction, and business profitability.
The transportation and logistics software enables better transactional and communication flow across the supply chain management. Logistics Management system (LMS) and Transport Management System (TMS) are extensions of these systems. These extensions are further divided into modules.
LMS solutions have OMS, WMS, and IMS support. As a result, data regarding inventory, supplier and customer management; payment and SLA terms; customer delivery, and product handling instructions are successfully synchronized across the logistics ecosystem. All the stakeholders get real-time data that saves logistics stakeholders from falling victim to sudden business risks and empower them with predictive alerts for risk avoidance and containment.
Similarly, TMS solutions incorporate transportation and last-mile delivery insights. These insights reflect the cost and transit time effect of various transportation means, delivery success metrics, fuel cost, route planning, and productivity analytics of riders.
Both LMS and TMS solutions require minimal human intervention and provide analytical insights based on scientific algorithms. Data logging, past experiences, real-time visibility, and industry-centric insights help supply chain managers to make their logistics processes agile, automated and optimized.
Transportation and logistics software benefits exceed predictive gains. Integration of sub-processes into the core system streamlines the entire logistics operations, which unlocks strategic capabilities with numerous benefits. Some of the benefits are like this:
Cost is a prominent challenge in logistics management. Inefficient working of logistical processes burdens operational costs. Automated transportation and logistics software provide 360-degree control over operational management, including fleet organization and infrastructural administration.
This standardizes logistical processes and weeds out unrequired procedures. As a result, organizations achieve optimized utilization of resources that contribute to cost savings.
Transportation and logistics solutions critically evaluate the order management cycle. This leads to fewer order processing mistakes and fewer wastages, including faster product delivery cycles. In addition, TMS enhances transportation efficiencies by aligning order processing with the availability of vehicles and riders.
Last-mile operations need to be environmentally and economically sustainable. Modern transportation and logistics software achieves both these objectives with intelligent route planning. Coupled with dynamic route optimization, this minimizes fuel cost, avoids traffic congestion, ensures timely product delivery, optimizes multi-delivery routes, and adherence to SLA.
Poor inter-departmental coordination, mismatch in vehicle capacity and requirement, and inappropriate route planning make vehicle capacity utilization difficult. But with the help of transportation and logistics software, analytical insights enable transportation heads to utilize vehicle capacity easily. Multi-stop delivery planning, reverse logistics, and optimized FTL/LTL shipments – all become easy with TMS.
There is a misconception that only traders and freight forwarders need real-time tracking. Research reveals that 91% of American customers actively track their orders. In a competitive market, businesses providing real-time order tracking to all stakeholders via new-age transportation and logistics software solutions are clear winners.
Visibility and transparency are critical to mitigate any potential risks. Automated software like TMS enhances operational visibility for decision-makers. Stakeholders can track the entire operational flow through unified dashboards. The budget formation, identification of unnecessary logistical processes, and KPI performance gap analysis become hassle-free.
Order priority, realistic delivery windows, geocoding, real-time tracking, route optimization, and in-depth analysis of fleet capabilities is essential for enhancing delivery productivity. Needless to say that all this is possible with smart transportation and logistics software.
Estimated time-of-arrival (ETA) is essential to ensure the smooth flow of last-mile operations. Inaccurate ETA has a cascading impact on distribution, order processing, and transportation. Arriving before the expected time can lead to detention time, and arrival beyond the set time means a delay in delivery. In either case, it is a loss to the business. Organizations that use automated solutions like TMS can safeguard themselves from either of the negative scenarios.
The functionality of automated transportation and logistics software allows easier integration of various logistics processes and fastens order processing. This ability successfully reduces delivery TAT (turn-around-time) and reaps the benefit of positive customer experiences.
It is true that customers do not buy products or services; instead, they buy experiences. Customers look for consistent, informed, and refined experiences. A survey suggests that customer experiences are a significant differentiator that can influence 86% of customers to buy more. On-time delivery improves customer experiences and motivates them for further purchases. Needless to mention that smart transportation and logistics software can unlock this ability with its analytical approach.
Transportation and logistics software like TMS enhances predictive analytics. That notifies concerned stakeholders of possible delays and risk factors. Proactive decision-making becomes easy. Features like route planning, real-time tracking and visibility, carrier and rider management, and seamless integration of logistical processes reduce the possibilities of risks and delays.
Logistics operations are a critical cog of eCommerce business. But a slight goof-up at one process can dent your organizational goals heavily. Smart transportation and logistics software easily integrate with existing IT infrastructure and provide a 360-degree analytical view to stakeholders.
When choosing transportation and logistics software for your business, look for the following:
eCommerce businesses deploy many solutions for strategic advantages, like ERP, POS, and WMS. Therefore, transforming your entire organizational IT capabilities is difficult and costly. So, opt for solutions seamlessly integrating with existing infrastructure while choosing an automated transportation and logistics solution. This way, businesses can save a lot of capital and time, allowing better investment in business expansion.
Each business has its unique working style and needs. So, the selected automated TMS solution should be customizable per strategic and operational requirements. A cloud-based SaaS option is increasingly being considered scalable enough to support future business growth.
Seamless communication is the backbone of businesses. As delivery time gets shorter, it is important to have all components and personnel on the same page for optimized operations. So, while selecting a transportation and logistics solution, ensure that it can smoothly foster a free flow of communication across the departments in a time-sensitive and unified manner.
Introducing software brings its own set of challenges, and the in-house team might not have the necessary technical know-how. Having a low-code integration of cloud-based transportation and logistics systems removes the burden of in-house IT infrastructure. Moreover, on-demand technical help is essential for faster resolution of software glitches.
Regular delivery, express delivery, or next-day delivery – all these delivery options have a cost and shipping option impact. Multiple shipping options allow customers to select the most suited to their needs. This helps enhance the customer experience and perception of the brand.
Shipsy offers world-class transportation and logistics management software that can seamlessly streamline most critical logistical issues. Our AI/ML capabilities can iron out operational hurdles from logistics operations and augment business growth by upscaling the supply chain functionalities.
With a huge network of 20000+ shippers, 3PL providers, and LLPs associated partners, Shipsy is a leading logistics platform enabler. This allows brands to optimize logistics operations, enhance CX and extend competitive advantage without a hitch.
Shipsy’s smart solution has advanced in-built AI algorithm support that offers on-the-go customization and helps businesses unlock:
For more information about Shipsy’s transportation and logistics solutions, get in touch with our experts and schedule a custom demo today.
Automating logistics operations ensure businesses that the timelines are not breached, business bottom lines are not hurt, and every logistics component works in a synchronous manner.
Read what makes logistics a key supply chain enabler that bridges the gap between the supply of products and the demand for products and makes organizations accomplish their objectives.
