The implementation of a Transportation Management System (TMS) comes with obvious benefits for Logistics, Transportation and Supply Chain functions. With streamlined carrier management, efficient rate shopping, freight optimization, and dynamic reporting, operations can think smarter, faster and leaner about how they move shipments throughout their distribution network.
Oftentimes, however, we overlook the obvious benefits this technology can have on other facets of your business for no additional costs or resource allocation.
Accounting
We’ve engaged with shippers before who were paying as many as 27 different carriers, brokers and 3PL’s on a weekly/monthly basis. For accounting departments trying to run lean, this is simply out of the question. Engaging with a TMS/3PL who can act as a single point for all your booked loads means one freight invoice- not 27. With the right platform, any freight charges you incur will have already been through a several checkpoint audit and already include all accessorial charges—ensuring you didn’t undercharge your customers.
A robust TMS that integrates with your ERP/WMS can also eliminate redundant data entry as it only has to be entered once and can flow through your current systems.
Outside of rate savings, the time savings here are tough to even quantify.
Finance
Cash is king, right? The implementation of a TMS means lower costs (through rates, cheaper mode selection and better routing), and improved cash flow through billing automation. As mentioned above, a capable Transportation Management System will include all the necessary surcharges and accessorials in its rate shop, ensuring you’re appropriately charging customers and avoiding the creation of a slow accounts receivable function.
Accurate billing equals quicker payments.
Customer Service
Most shippers do their diligence regarding the carrier partners who service their business. They find the best carriers to service certain lanes, modes and service-levels at the lowest costs and for the best service. Despite this, nearly all shippers have multiple carrier partners which leaves them blind to their in-transit shipments.
With the right TMS, customer service can view all their current shipments, across all modes, on one, single screen. Giving customer service the intelligence to identify which shipments may fail to meet their delivery deadlines or which ones may have missed a scan allows them to proactively improve customer service and communicate with customers.
Warehousing
Through its robust reporting functionality, a TMS can help you understand which carriers to select in order to ensure your product is making it the hands of the customer on time. Once you have the confidence to know your customers are getting shipments on time, you can also plan more effectively for having less inventory on hand. This is increasingly important for online retailers and ecommerce stores.
Procurement
In line with Warehousing, gaining insight into your demand estimates and inbound freight gives firms more confidence to procure materials in advance and save by negotiating long-term contracts.
Human Resources
A centralized platform can streamline and automate several manual processes currently being deployed throughout an organization and across multiple departments. The elimination of redundancies and inefficiencies created by employees operating outside their normal scope of work allows HR to redeploy workers and ensure they are more efficient and maximizing time.
Don’t Wait!
Integrated Shipping Solution offers a robust TMS that can improve your entire logistics function and all the departments listed above. From rate shopping to freight optimization, documentation and in-transit visibility, our platform can simplify distribution and make sense of all your critical data in one, centralized login.
Best of all, we offer this for no up-front costs that typically eat up to 25% of your freight savings in the cost of the TMS alone. Want to learn more? Give us a call or shoot us an email, info@motustransportation.com