Various shippers are looking to expand their supply chains with rising freight charges, packed truck capacity, along with increasing demands of consumers.
How to work with the best transportation management system?
Introduction
Various shippers are looking to expand their supply chains with rising freight charges, packed truck capacity, along with increasing demands of consumers. In this respect, transportation services remain the talk of the town among various shippers. To make the problem of shippers quite easier, we bring you varieties of transportation logistics software that will help the buyers in selecting their services and also will benefit from upgrading their technologies in respect of supply chains. With the help of this list, the buyers will have a transparent list of things that could work for them and hence will help them to choose from different transportation logistics software. Here are the lists of the best software packages for transport management systems.
3Gtms
In the industry of transport management systems, 3Gtms is quite new and partners with TMW. This transportation logistics software focuses its venture on North America, and its headquarters is in Shelton, Connecticut. They have a relatively small audience base as they target shippers from medium-sized to 3PL’s. There is a lot of potential in this, and currently, they are focussing on land transport only, but it will not be surprising if they start to support rail and international transportation as well, including sea routes. You can know more about them by visiting their website here https://www.3gtms.com/.
BluJay
BluJay transport management system focuses on both international services as well as domestic. They also offer stand-alone transport services along with managed transport management services. They offer their services to customers from moderate shippers to 3PL’s, but they can serve the customers that come under the ambit of large shippers as well. They have their headquarters in Manchester, UK, and to know more about them, you can visit their official website.
Cloud Logistics
They are primarily based in West Palm Beach in Florida, and cloud logistics target audience is mainly domestic truckload transport services, and they continue to strive to do better and to maintain their functionality. At present, this transportation logistics software is not available for rail travel, international oceans, or air, but they give top services to their customers. They also have a low total cost of ownership.
Apart from all these transportation management services, there are other companies as well that provide managed transportation logistics software services, such as Descartes. They have their headquarters at Waterloo, Canada. They offer stand-alone and managed transportation management services for both domestic and international. Then there is also JDA that is based in Scottsdale, Arizona and is the largest suite vendor with robust platforms. Their target audience is large and complex shippers, along with third-party transportation logistics software companies. They have a high total cost of ownership when compared to other companies. Other companies in this race include Kuebix, Manhattan, Mercury Gate, Oracle, SAP, TMC. Division of CH Robinson, TMW, transplace, etc.
Documents Require for Transport Management System
After outlining the top transportation management System and transportation logistics software, the buyers should now assemble all the required documents so they can make a rational decision as quite often we observe that buyers and companies make rash decisions based on their excitement and enthusiasm. There are so many documents a buyer needs to finalize his decision, and we have listed out some of the documents that are mandatory to secure the deal from the top companies that we have mentioned previously.
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Template for logistics RFP and InTek Freight
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Template discussion on MercuryGate RFP
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Gartner’s Magic Quadrant Analysis Key to TMS Buying Selection Process
These documents are a good way to start the process of the deal this you also want to expand along with the rating that you place next to the requirement depending upon how important it is for the company. It is important to give those numbers because it will help you in decision-making. After the collection of all the responses, it is easier for you to give an overall score of what fits your company better.
While scoring, there are two points that one needs to keep in check they are. The scorings should finish before the documents go out, and secondly, transport management services vendors are not allowed to see the scores/ratings unless and until they are filled out. If you miss any of the points to consider, there might raise a situation of unintended bias.
Functionality to include in Transport management services documents
Under general functionality, the documents should consist of modes of the freight supporters, capabilities of both national and international such as language, currency, and Geographic data. It should also include any technological Architecture such as Cloud or mainframe freight specifications and document management. It should also have ease of integration that supports spreadsheets, FTP, OCR, and other documents.
Under the umbrella of Contracts and Ratings, it should have Freight sourcing along with Bid RFP tools that will help in optimization, modes that could support national and international affairs, contract management plus ratings on carrier freights and lastly it should have the ability that will help us to turn quotes instantly to loads.
Other requirements include Strategic Planning and Execution, Optimizing engine consisting of data that could be optimized and move to execution instantly, the clause of web portals and exceptions alerts and reporting, and settlement. Under the settlement, there should be freight audit payment, carrier invoices, billings of customers could be electronic, email, etc., and in analytics, you should have flexible reporting that is configurable and dashboards along with strategic support analytics.
Conclusion
With the help of all the responses that you have recorded and received, you have to answer one simple question as to what items are of high importance and are yet to not base their functionality in Transport management services and transportation logistics software. There are certain questions that you have to ask before sealing the deal, such as will there be custom code by the software provider and what is the cost of such services and will they put it on the base code etc. these are some questions one should ask before finalizing things.
