How to Decide When a TMS Makes Sense
If your small or medium-sized business (SMB) is considering switching to a transportation management system (TMS), you may already face transportation management challenges:
- You may need more real-time visibility into your transportation operations to avoid delays, missed shipments, and unhappy customers (who may also simultaneously demand faster, more reliable shipping).
- Your manual transportation management processes may mean you suffer from errors, delays, or inefficiencies.
- You may be trying to grow your business while facing more complex transportation and supply chain demands.
- You may need help to provide consistent service levels to customers.
The value a TMS brings
A TMS really provides your SMB’s fastest route to improve operations and reduce transportation costs by optimizing shipping routes, consolidating shipments, reducing transit and order processing times, improving delivery times, enhancing customer relations, and negotiating better rates with carriers.
With a TMS, you gain real-time visibility into transportation operations to track shipments, identify delays, and make informed decisions that improve operational efficiency.
Multiple communication tools within a TMS permit you to connect with carriers, 3PLs, and customers. They can send emails, SMS, or even desktop alerts to users when the carrier sends an update (for example, time of pick-up, any freight delays, and expected arrival), so you reduce missed deliveries and save on shipping costs.
By automating many manual transportation management processes–carrier selection, routing, scheduling, and the like–your TMS will reduce errors and increase efficiency. Your TMS will also help you to meet customer demands for faster and more reliable shipping by optimizing shipping routes, reducing transit times, and improving delivery times. It can also flex and grow with your business. And with tools for data analytics and reporting capabilities, you can make data-driven decisions and improve operational performance.
For those SMBs with an existing CRM or supplier management system, their TMS can likely connect with them to improve freight planning. To populate a new customer entry file, you can upload customer profile information in the CMS through the TMS, store shipping records through that file, including carrier, routing numbers, pick-up and delivery times, and other essential data). It makes managing transportation solutions easier and provides a simple-to-navigate platform to recall information from multiple devices.
In summary, a TMS can bring your SMB significant benefits by reducing transportation costs, improving visibility and efficiency, automating processes, enhancing customer satisfaction, supporting scalability, enabling better decision-making, and reducing administrative workload. You are now free to focus on your core business activities.
SMBs can benefit from a TMS – but many businesses think they can’t afford one. Think again! BrillDog will soon announce the general availability of its BrillDogTMS – in a freemium model – which means companies can use the software at no charge–a great way to get started with a TMS, then transition to additional features as they become available. The BrillDog FreeDog version of the TMS includes rate quotes, bill of lading creation, electronic carrier dispatch, LTL rates, shipment tracking, basic reporting, claims management, and more. Companies can get started with the BrillDogTMS – for free – by contacting BrillDog today.
