What are the Features of the Transportation Management System (TMS)?

Any discourse on business & economics is incomplete without Covid19. The 2020 pandemic has made a major impact on all sectors of the economy especially logistics & supply chain. As per a recent research by Accenture, 94% of 1000 fortune companies witnessed supply chain disruptions with 75% companies having a negative or strongly negative impact on business. Covid19 exposed the vulnerabilities of the supply chain and paved the way for automated transportation management systems. Before understanding why TMS software is the need of the industry, let’s cover up the basics; 

What is transportation & logistics management software? 

Transportation & logistics management software is a technical software that resolves challenges faced by logistics & supply chain professionals. TMS takes your logistics business from MIS reports to complete digitisation, helping companies in end-to-end automation of business processes. Logistics management software helps businesses to improve their efficiency, helps in reducing costs & time and helps in cost reduction by highlighting operational gaps and helping in setting long-term & short-term objectives. 

What TMS Features are Important?

With the existing challenges in the logistics & supply chain industry, many companies have already switched or are in-process of switching to full-fledged transportation management systems. These high-tech solutions take charge of logistics operations from order planning to final invoice & claim settlement. As we’re close to 2022, it’s important to invest in an intelligent technical software to improve your logistics efficiency & overall productivity. 

Here are some important features to consider while selecting a TMS for your business; 

Logistics Control Tower 

A high quality transportation management system provides a logistics control tower that empowers logistics & supply chain professionals with real-time monitoring of orders, en-route shipments, loading & unloading process vendors, exceptions & more, all at one single dashboard. Digitised control towers cut down 80% of manual work and let logistics businesses take charge of their operations from order planning to final invoice & claim settlement. 

Insight- Fretron’s real-time shipment tracking has eased a lot of issues for CenturyPly’s Logistics Head Prithviraj.  Fretron’s has changed the working pattern for the organization as it is easy for Prithviraj to see each truck’s live and accurate position in a ‘control tower’ (with all the details in one screen) without having to call individual drivers. It has saved both his time and increased movement visibility.

Logistics Orchestration

Logistics orchestration helps logistics professionals to plan & streamline their logistics operations with the help of a build loading workflow engine. This end-to-end automation of logistics operations increases logistics efficiency and decreases operational TATs. A high-tech transportation management software also assists logistics service providers with intelligent freight sourcing with spot bidding and saves hours of time in communicating with the vendors. 

Insight – Fretron’s high-tech transportation management software helps mid-sized & large enterprises to cut down their freight costs and increase on-time delivery rate. After using Fretron, VMart’s logistics head, Sanjay Sarkar has greatly improved their on-time dispatches with the load builder (90% quicker order management.) Above everything, companies like VMart love the fact that Fretron’s TMS is 100% cloud based & cloud agnostic and does not store any data offline. 

Freight Audit & billing 

Transportation management system has solved the biggest issue for logistics and supply chain professionals – billing & claim management. Automation of logistics operations makes the payment and sharing of ePODs easy. Digitization of billing operations provides error-free calculation without human intervention and reduces billing reconciliation time. 

Insight-Fretron’s simple approach to solving complex problems in the logistics industry is positively impacting the work cycles for its clients. Eastern Road Carriers director, GK Mittal made his processes more convenient, timely and efficient. Real-time tracking, instant SMS alerts and notifications, detailed MIS-reports and deep analytics has had a distinct impact on the organization’s operations. 

Wrapping Up

The transportation management software is an easy solution to complex problems in the logistics industry. It’s essential to keep a sync with the ongoing market trends and take up a smart digitised approach. 

Author Bio: 

Gurleen Sethi: Gurleen Sethi , a logophile from the national capital of the country – Delhi. is a Content Lead at Fretron. Over 4 years of content & marketing career, she has honed the expertise in creating high-quality content with special focus on maintaining the brand’s authenticity & originality. 

“The devil is in the detail”, is the philosophy she follows and defines pretty much everything she does. She loves to innovate & experiment with her style of writing. Apart from writing, she is focused on ideating marketing strategies.