Transportation management system (TMS)

A transportation management system plays a central role in the total supply chain. It is a powerful tool that enables businesses to automate activities like carrier selection or invoice audit, gain control over costs, a better visibility on their logistics processes, which will result in lower costs and higher customer satisfaction. It can provide you with a competitive advantage by enabling you to have lower costs per order/transport and meet customer demands more effectively and efficiently.

The cost of a Transportation Management System (TMS) will vary widely depending on a range of factors such as the number of shipments, the modalities in scope and the level of functionalities needed. Generally, TMS pricing models fall into several categories, follow this link to read what they are.

With Carrier Connectivity, users save significant time per booking/tender while benefiting from the largest network of connected partners and seamless integrations with ERP and back-end systems. Consolidation/ Optimization features enable cost reductions of 3% to 15%, offering multi-mode, multi-leg, and global optimization along with true fleet versus for-hire optimization. Bid/Spot Booking/Tendering functionalities ensure finding the best rates, reducing risks, and improving on-time percentages through automated bid initiation and inclusive carrier processes. Real-time visibility with ETA Calculation not only reduces charges and fees by over 50% but also provides predictive ETAs and the highest compliance rate in the industry, offering visibility and real-time updates to customers and internal teams.

A Shipper TMS is the ideal place to determine the carbon emissions by collecting and analyzing data of all the transportation activities of an organization and applying the same logic across the different forwarders/carriers. Of course, taking into account the applicable modality, weight and type of transport. Data which is typically fully available in a TMS. The key aspects of how a TMS will measure carbon emissions are; Mode of transportation, Load weight, Distance travelled & Fuel consumption.

A Transportation Management System (TMS) and Visibility software can be separate solutions. The more complete TMS platforms offer built-in visibility features tightly integrated into the whole TMS providing more flexible and advanced options to use the data for all TMS users and other internal or external users. Such complete TMS can also use that data to automatically communicate updates via EDI/API messages to forwarders/carriers if needed.

Descartes MacroPoint is a global, real-time freight visibility platform. We provide load location information to customers so they can see all their in-transit freight in real time, at one time, in one portal. Real- time updates and dynamic ETAs enable your customers to monitor the timeliness of their loads and shipments and adjust delivery windows when necessary.