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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According to Gartner, the global market for transportation management systems is anticipated to increase by 60% from $1.3 billion in 2019 to $2.1 billion in 2024.
The main driver of this increase is the development of logistics and transportation-related technologies, as well as the surge in eCommerce and cross-border commerce.
Businesses are moving toward technology-driven platforms to streamline their operations and reduce overall transportation costs. Among them, the transport management system (TMS) is of vital importance.
Still, transportation is one of the largest contributors to logistics costs, amounting to 58%, and reducing transport costs continues to be the number 1 challenge faced by shippers worldwide.
So, how to choose the right TMS solution seems to be an even more crucial question as compared to when to use a TMS solution.
A TMS will assist you in enhancing supply chain visibility by improving transport operations and trade compliances. In the long run, it will also benefit freight delivery, thereby making the complete supply chain more cost-effective. Also, it is useful for businesses that want to deploy ERP and build a bridge between multiple internal networks for a smooth flow of information.
In this blog, we discuss the top 10 reasons to invest in an AI-powered TMS solution and also explore a detailed answer to the question – when to use a TMS solution.
According to a recent Accenture study, supply chain disruptions affected 94% of 1000 Fortune businesses, with 75% reporting a negative effect on the company. Many businesses have already shifted to comprehensive transportation management systems or are in the midst of doing so in light of the issues faced by the logistics and supply chain sectors.
With cutting-edge technologies, such as AI, ML, advanced analytics, and real-time data, businesses can handle all aspects of logistics, including order planning, transportation, final invoice processing, and claims management. Investing in advanced TMS solutions with robust and highly advanced technological infrastructure increases the productivity of the entire logistics ecosystem and helps businesses scale well with evolving demands.
Every business has a different set of challenges and business use cases, which need a different set of automated solutions. While some businesses might rely on dedicated transportation and distribution systems, others might work well with floating fleets.
Hence, to help businesses identify when to use a TMS Solution, we share three pointers to help them decide the right timing.
When the business operations require integrated management or communication across mutliple parties and service providers, such that the underlying management systems, such as WMS, ERP, CMS, etc., fail to over comprehensive insights, it is time to switch over to a TMS with integrated capabilities.
An advanced TMS provides logistics experts with real-time access to a single dashboard where they can track orders, shipments in transit, and suppliers involved. Manual effort is reduced by digital control towers, which enables logistics companies to digitize and streamline their operations from order planning to final billing and claim settlement.
As a control tower, an intelligent TMS is of great use in facilitating two critical tasks. The first is ensuring efficient and optimized routing. This is accomplished by accounting for multiple factors, like carrier options, load selection, vehicle capacity, and more. The second aspect involves the track and trace capabilities. With real-time tracking, logistics managers can easily ensure transparency in fleet movement.
Once businesses start to scale their operations, having a centralized interface for managing, monitoring, tracking, and controlling the tasks and operations stemming from multiple parties and system components becomes challenging.
For example, if any manufacturing unit is sending out 20000 shipments daily for distribution and delivery, having poor visibility over the shipment movements and inability to optimize the distribution process is only going to impede scaling.
With the aid of an in-built loading workflow engine and smart logistics orchestration, TMS enables logistics professionals to organize and streamline their logistics operations. This end-to-end automation feature helps increase the efficiency of logistical operations and decrease the operational TATs. Additionally, cutting-edge transportation management software helps logistics service providers with spot bidding and intelligent freight sourcing, saving hours of time in communication with the vendors.
Claims settlement, invoicing, billing, and rider payouts – without proper supportive automation, auditing and billings are always vulnerable to fraud, risks, and errors. If an enterprise is using multiple 3PL partners and is also sending shipments to international delivery locations, this process becomes even more complex because of the container deposits, RFQs, etc.
Streamlining the billing and claim management process with TMS helps logistics and supply chain experts optimize their workflow. Payment and sharing of ePODs are made simple by the automation of shipping processes. The time it takes to perform billing reconciliation is decreased, and calculations are made without human error owing to digitizing billing procedures.
Smart TMS helps with the rapid customization of factors like carrier agreements, transit times, operation dates, and more. With TMS, businesses can easily leverage preferential terms and negotiated lanes by consolidating contracts via digitized databases.
Now that we have explored the answers to “when to use a TMS solution”, let us find out what makes an AI-powered solution different and the best option.
Logistics accounts for a significant portion of a company’s total expenses – approximately 10-15%. While an efficient TMS handles all parts of monitoring, coordinating, managing, and handling any situation connected to product transportation from the time an order is placed until its final delivery, having dynamic capabilities is a game changer!
Artificial intelligence and machine learning in TMS enable shippers and logistics service providers to maximize the return on investment from system adoption. The ability to exploit AI-based TMS is quickly becoming a market differentiator, and organizations that use machine learning and TMS functions in tandem typically gain market share over competitors.
The key value delivered by AI and ML in TMS solutions is the highest degree of optimization, which is of paramount importance in logistical movements and planning.
We explore the importance of optimization in transport management in the following section.
Artificial intelligence (AI), along with optimization, is the most recent digital technology that is expected to disrupt supply chain processes in the near future significantly. With the incorporation of AI technology and optimization, newer platforms are elevating TMS capabilities to previously unheard-of levels, providing even more opportunities for businesses to improve transportation efficiency and save freight costs.
Transport is the primary part of the supply chain system as it affects all processes, including transfer, distribution, supply, logistics, and customer service. An optimized TMS, in collaboration with resource planners, provides routes for managing truckloads of shipments in accordance with their pick-up points, weight, and end-destination.
This results in improved cargo consolidation, leading to enhanced performance and efficiency.
AI-powered TMS optimizes the use of all the resources and assets on the basis of various parameters, including costs, order groups, the number of stops, and more. Further, businesses can choose custom criteria and optimize operations, such as routing via smart optimization engines that become smarter and even more efficient with time.
Such optimization provides visibility and ensures multi-stop routes than single-stop routes, which directly results in cost-effectiveness. Through its implementation, there is tighter control of all operations in the logistics system.
Hence, the cost of operations, vehicles, fuels, riders, and every other resource decreases, thereby increasing the profitability of the business.
Stats show that 30% of companies witnessed higher levels of customer satisfaction after smart TMS integration. AI-based TMS platforms send automated alerts and communication to all the stakeholders, and all these alerts and communication can be customized and configured. Hence, the customers can track the orders in real time and experience better accountability from logistics providers.
This not only reduces the need for individual tracking by businesses, but it also reduces customer queries for shipment tracking and delivery status.
Smart TMS also leverages data analytics, which elevates the organization’s overall performance. For instance, it helps identify geographic locations most impacted by late deliveries. Furthermore, alerts are also issued in the event of accidents, delays, and unforeseen stops, which result in constant monitoring of shipments.
Manually managed transport or fleets means skimming through hundreds of options manually and figuring out which one works the best. Enterprises need to study each service provider to identify the most effective, most profitable, and highest-quality logistics partner.
However, there is no standardized and data-driven process to get performance insights for all the logistical components, such as drivers, dispatch partners, fleet providers, carrier partners, etc. Thus, businesses struggle with measuring the operational inefficiencies for choosing the most profitable logistics partners for them.
This leaves potential room for errors and inefficiencies that might later take a toll on the supply chain operations in the form of costs, poor operations management, inefficient inventory management, etc.
Besides these functions, AI-powered TMS solutions also create performance indicator reports relating to transport, highlighting the differences in delivery time and customer satisfaction levels between carriers.
A smart TMS solution enables businesses to anticipate transit times, plan for vehicle capacity, and identify at-risk shipments by applying in-built ML algorithms to historical data and patterns. These platforms also offer dynamic routing features to overcome traffic obstructions and minimize the time lost in transit.
Shippers and 3PLs can collect and use an even wider variety of data about transportation performance when the TMS tech stack incorporates a layer of artificial intelligence and optimization. For instance, they can use real-time weather and traffic data to make more precise, dynamic route plans and real-time vehicle monitoring can give them comparisons of the performance of the planned and actual routes.
Customers are increasingly demanding fast delivery, the flexibility to make last-minute changes to their orders, and personalized delivery schedules. Companies face tremendous difficulty in adjusting their processes to meet customer expectations.
Smart TMS solutions will establish a connection between the systems in charge of managing warehouses and orders. Selecting the most cost-effective carrier is made simpler by consolidating customer orders. Both consumers and businesses will gain from this action.
Investing in a smart TMS solution can be useful when it comes to warehouse efficiency. With the use of a smart transportation management system, you will spend less time managing freight and more time working on other projects, such as warehouse operations.
Additionally, businesses will spend less time correcting inaccuracies brought on by entry errors or entering new data, given the TMS is integrated with other systems, such as ERP. Businesses can utilize a Warehouse Management System in conjunction with a Supply Chain Visibility Solution to achieve even greater cost savings and efficiency advantages.
Smart tracking capabilities of AI-based TMS solutions help track shipments with ease via a single consolidated dashboard. When a shipment is running behind schedule or fails to arrive at its destination, organizations will be notified.
Knowing when service interruptions occur allows businesses to make the necessary modifications quickly. To create more efficient route itineraries, tracking data can be used to determine how long it takes to complete a route.
A smart TMS solution can help businesses maintain track of their order and shipment lifecycles in real-time. They will be better able to predict their inventory accurately, increasing supply chain accountability and transparency.
A robust inventory tracking feature provides them with the satisfaction that the customers will receive their items on time. Supply chain activities will benefit from having this level of control over inventory management, especially as eCommerce freight transportation expands.
Investing in a smart transportation management solution can significantly reduce shipping costs. It allows the evaluation of possible logistical routes based on factors like cost, distance, time taken, etc.
This allows businesses to easily compare and select the most effective route, vehicle, riders, and more. Moreover, TMS offers intelligent recommendations on routes and fleet composition to be adopted for efficient operation.
With smart TMS solutions, the entire supply chain can be transparent. Real-time visibility and access to data from all other integrated systems is a big plus.
Logistical managers are better placed to anticipate potential issues and take more effective actions. As a result, a high degree of client satisfaction is preserved without compromising performance.
The importance of optimized routing has never been stronger than it is right now, given the increased order volumes owing to the booming eCommerce sector. Businesses can implement effective fleet utilization with the use of a smart TMS solution.
This solution allows greater control over delivery runs and order clubbing. Picking, transporting, and delivering are streamlined as the system offers optimized routes catering to order clubbing as well as return pickups. This saves time and money involved in delivery fulfillment.
As transportation planning and execution become more predictable, dock scheduling becomes more effective. By coordinating deliveries, an efficient and smart TMS solution can reduce waiting times while still ensuring high-quality transportation.
The precision of shipment is greatly enhanced by the usage of a smart transportation management solution. Smart transportation and distribution ensure that order fulfillment is also significantly more accurate as a result of real-time tracking and supply chain knowledge. The TMS software completely eliminates shipping errors and abnormalities. Any transit-related issues, no matter how little, must not have a negative impact on the customer.
Because the TMS automates all of the documents, contracts, deeds, etc, using it helps save time and money. Additionally, it will lessen the quantity of paperwork and documentation needed to keep the business operating efficiently.
It’s a win-win situation because administrative costs will decrease, and inaccurate invoicing as well as improper billing errors will be minimized.
Shipsy’s AI-powered logistics platform seamlessly connects all cross-border and in-country logistics. Businesses can better manage all first, middle, and last-mile activities with real-time insights into delivery progress. As a leading SaaS-based logistics software provider it empowers businesses to automate, optimize, and simplify all supply chain operations.
With Shipsy’s smart technological offerings, businesses can unlock operational efficiency and use real-time analytics for end-to-end logistics visibility and unlock:
For more information or to get started, connect with our experts for a custom demo and stay ahead of competitors at each major step.
Looking for the best TMS solutions? Here are our top 5 picks and our take on how TMS solutions help minimize errors, reduce delivery costs, and increase efficiency via their smart functionalities.
51% of shippers across the globe struggle with transportation costs and 37% find business process improvement as one of the major challenges. What is TMS and how can it help - Explore in this blog.
