One of the biggest opportunities to dramatically improve supply chain performance occurs when traditional supply chain functions are decomposed and reinvented as integrated business processes. Few supply chain practitioners would dispute that notion. However, when it comes to their technology strategy, too many practitioners end up deploying their transportation management system (TMS) or multiple systems in silos: outbound TL/LTL, parcel, inbound, international, etc. The challenge facing supply chain practitioners who want to achieve breakthrough performance improvement is to understand the value and difference of converging TMS and connecting to their trading partners.
Breaking down the silos is not as simple as integrating the various existing applications. Instead, we are talking about how the business process would be fundamentally different or have completely new capabilities if the technology silos didn’t exist and multiple functions had been designed together in the first place. Part of the problem supply chain practitioners face is stepping out of the business process paradigms that have been dictated by technological limitations of the past. Applications on the same technology stack do not necessarily address the issue. Sometimes it takes new technologies or disruptive business practices to cause us to rethink what we have done in the past. Currently, the market pressures of the Amazon effect, coupled with the capacity crunch are perfect drivers to force this change.
