How to get a free Transportation Management System (TMS)
If you’ve investigated a transportation management system, you know it can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars when you take into account hardware and software, training, and implementation costs. There is a simple way to get one for free with almost no start-up costs or long implementation time.
What a TMS can do for Your Visibility of Shipments
This allows you to coordinate and consolidate shipments to save money. It also allows you to allocate resources effectively in your shipping/receiving departments.
Cost Visibility
Wouldn’t you like to know if one customer has changed their ordering patterns and instead of ordering ¾ truckload is now ordering only ¼ truckload and by doing so has just increased your costs significantly? If you know about this, you can take corrective action like increasing your customer’s prices or collaborating with them to order in larger quantities.
Expedited Freight Visibility
The customer is king. These days many companies are paying huge expedited freight charges and don’t even know about it. It’s just lumped into their general freight charges. Wouldn’t you like to know which customers are expedited the most? Wouldn’t you like to investigate why?
Inbound visibility
If most of your raw materials are being shipped in “prepaid” you really are paying for the freight. It’s not free. It’s included in your purchase price. The cost of the freight and the suppliers’ margin on that freight is also included. For most companies, this can be a huge source of cost savings if they take control of their inbound freight. But who has time? With a TMS system, you can get visibility and take control. If you track it, you can manage it.
On-time Visibility
How do you know if your logistics function is servicing your customer effectively? It might have gotten off your dock on time, but how do you know your customer got it when they needed it? If you don’t have a TMS system, you probably don’t. A good TMS system will track pick-up performance as well as, delivery performance.
Vendor Management
So you know that sometimes you don’t get your raw materials on time and it causes havoc in your organization. Was it that the carrier was late? Or, was it that the vendor didn’t ship on time? With a TMS you have visibility and can take appropriate action.
