How a TMS Supports Better Supply Chain Management
Port congestion, potential rail strikes, supply shortages, labor shortages, and inventory gluts. Small-to-medium-sized shippers are confronted on a daily basis with these supply chain bottlenecks.
Some issues resolve over time: While massive U.S. port backups are primarily gone, they have impacted U.S. shipping patterns (for example, some incoming freight has migrated from West Coast to East Coast ports). Meanwhile, the American Trucking Association reports that the industry is short 80,000 truck drivers, which has hobbled some smaller carriers, as has a spate of small carrier bankruptcies.
Closer to home: If you are a small-to-medium-sized shipper, your supply chain management needs may have changed. Your existing facilities may be at maximum capacity. Or you may be fortunate enough to have skyrocketing product demand. Or maybe you’ve recently introduced a new line of products.
A quality TMS will help a shipper make better choices in the face of supply chain adversity.
Using a transportation management system (TMS) to save money
Good supply chain management deals successfully with change. If you have not conducted a freight expense review for a while, consider the value of using a cloud-based TMS to streamline your supply chain. You may be shipping with a parcel carrier where an LTL provider may be the more economical choice. Are you paying for premium transportation where delivery time is not critical? Does your system today provide guidance on which D/C to ship from? A top-tier TMS can assist in mitigating these “profit leaks.”
A TMS helps you organize and segment your data so you can reduce your costs by three to six percent right off the bat. A TMS provides better visibility into where you’re spending money and where you can save it. You can make wiser decisions on all your tasks–from shipment routing to carrier selection, load optimization and shipment consolidation—all while eliminating costly human error and manual inefficiencies. A TMS:
- Brings all related costs, contracts, carriers options, and other shipping information into a single, central repository so you can compare carrier rates, enabling better negotiations.
- Provides detailed analytics on carriers, customers, modes, and SKUs, aggregated into a single dashboard where you can define and track key metrics and shape (and re-shape) your shipping process in real-time for the best, most cost-effective results.
- Eliminates manual labor and guesswork, automating manual tasks to save admin costs.
- Gives your entire operation access to an ongoing ledger of orders, keeping warehouse staff and drivers on the road up to speed on where shipment locations–whether in the warehouse, in transit, or at the final destination point.
- Streamlines your transportation department so you can stay in touch with carriers 24×7.
From monitoring driver performance to real-time course correction, to inventory tracking, to tweaking route efficiency, a TMS gives you a wealth of options and data enabling a high performing supply chain.
Ready to take your next step in exploring a TMS?
The BrillDog TMS provides visibility across the supply chain so that users gain efficiencies while meeting customer service requirements and lowering costs. Contact BrillDog today.
