TMS Software for Freight Management: Benefits, Cost Savings, Opportunities!

Why not? Let’s go two for two today. This is Jeremy with Easy Logistics Management. I wanted to dive into a few topics that there’s a lot of search for on the internet and go through what I believe are their benefits, cost savings, and opportunities. Specifically for TMS software or transportation management systems and freight management systems and maybe even parcel management and other freight management tools. Benefits, cost savings. Yeah.

Benefits of Using a good TMS Software or FMS Software

Here’s my diagram of loosely what you can do with it. From your TMS system, you can connect to your ecommerce system, to your warehouse provider, to your trucking provider, to your parcel providers, and a whole range of interesting integrations and automation. Let’s dive right into it. For benefits of using a transportation management software or TMS software.

A good transportation management system should allow you to, “Book track with hundreds, if not thousands of carriers and one easy to use interface.” We have been in this business for 20 years. There’s just a lot of benefits to having one interface or being able to import rates into one interface to save you time and money.

Number two, combining brokerage rates with your carrier direct tariff can be done into a TMS or freight management system. This allows you to shop your brokerage rates side by side with your carrier direct tariff. In most cases, you need a CzarLite rate basis or something similar to that but it can make it a lot easier so you’re not having to toggle between systems to get things done.

Number three, there are systems out there that we’re working with that allow you to compare “Freight shipping side by side with ground shipping in one TMS.” My FreightDesk Online, and there’s one other one. If you’re interested in that, definitely contact me and we can put you in touch. But our brokerage freight rates can import and our FedEx rates can import into these systems if you don’t have the best discount on either of those modes.

Number four, using a transportation management software or TMS for freight or parcel that allows you to use one software. Hopefully we get one CSR team like our company works and to communicate with because that just simplifies things. My team does a lot of communicating with freight carriers and parcel carriers, and it can be a pain in the butt. But we have one small dedicated team that runs everything for our clients. That can be a huge benefit if that’s not how you’re currently set up.

Number five, API integration to ecommerce software, ERP business software, or even your warehouse management system or order management system. Any transportation management or freight management system worth its salt should have fixed integrations or open integrations to most major platforms of this type to make your life easier and book track, and automate those processes.

Number six, who doesn’t want to do more with less headcount? Be efficient, make more money, pay your employees really well that you have. Bonus them. Use software for what software was intended for. Do more with less people and pay them better. I think that’s awesome. We try and do that.

Number seven, complete outsource or Manage Trans. Transportation management systems, in my opinion, are a gateway to Manage Trans. We offer all these service. We use our software to automate a lot of the Manage Trans, whether it’s a full scope of warehousing, parcel, and freight shipping or whatever it is. But that’s a great, in my opinion, a gateway into Manage Trans. If you’re a big company that generally I think you have to spend about a million dollars to look into a Manage Trans solution. But that may be changing fast, especially with all the automation.

Number eight, save money. Shopping carriers per shipment and per lane because it goes without reason if you think about it. Not every carrier is optimized for every shipment and every lane because they’re all set up a little bit differently with our hub and spoke systems and where they run more efficiently and cost effectively. By having access to a freight management system or transportation management system that shops a bunch of carriers, you’ll always get the best price in every single lane. Because you’re shopping tons of carriers that offer different pricing in different lanes.

Potential Cost Savings From leveraging a good FMS or TMS Software

Jumping into cost savings. Number one, there are tons, well, if not a few, really good no cost transportation management or TMS systems if you’re using a broker’s platform. There are some for pay ones, but I mean, using a system like we have, that you can integrate your carrier direct tariff and shop our rates or even plug our brokered rates into a third party TMS that’s lower no cost. That’s probably a good cost savings methodology and something to look at.

Number two, hopefully you’re always getting the best rates because you’re shopping hundreds of brokered carriers as well as as your carrier direct tariff and anything else you have access to and can plug into these TMS software. That’s a great cost savings. Number three, more automated, less work, less headcount across the board, just more efficient. Do more with less using software to manage your freight management and transportation management services.

Number four, automate busy work, tracking, client communications, quoting, booking, tracking, setting up loads, dispatching loads. These systems do all or most of it. Our system even sends email notifications to your client, your team, whoever you want. You can put as many emails on it as you want, and they will ping your clients every scan along the way. Almost like a UPS or FedEx system for heavy freight now. That’s pretty awesome.

Number five, API automation for full TMS freight and parcel automation. You can fully automate via API or application programming interface, which is the standard at this point for integration, ease of integration, all the services. That can save you a lot of time, a lot of money. I had a six on here. I’m sure there’s something else. Maybe we’ll get back to that.

Opportunities for your Company if you leverage these Logistical Software’s Correctly

Let’s move on to opportunities as far as I can tell. Number one, automate everything. If you’re open to it, we have clients that automate our brokerage rates into another set of brokerage rates and a carrier direct tariff and parcel rates into their website, and it automates everything. It takes a little bit of time to set up. Might pull some hairs out along the way. But a lot of it is really fixed integration, so it’s not all that tough. You just need to configure it and take a little bit of time up front.

Number two, scale faster. If you’re a growing company, why not take advantage of freight management and transportation management software to focus on scaling faster and being able to do more with less? This is one part of that as far as I’m concerned. Number three, refocusing on your core competencies, new product development, sales, marketing, things that you got into the business to do, not calling truckers and haggling on price and dealing with your FedEx rep. This can all be automated.

I want to focus on marketing and sales and content marketing. I don’t want to pack boxes and haggle with trucks. That’s probably why I have a team that helps me do that and software that does a lot of it, but keeps us sane.

Number four, do more with less. We’ve said it before, but it’s a huge opportunity. I mean, if you can keep your headcount low, do more with less, automate more so that you can focus on the stuff that really makes you money, which is putting out killer products, killer marketing, and ramping up your sales team, why not?

Then hopefully less headaches because it’s all fairly automated, especially if you deal with a company like ours that has all the robust technology, as well as a very small operations and service team where you’re not getting thrown around to 100 CSRs that you never know who you’re talking to, where there’s accountability, it can be way less stressful and more enjoyable dealing with a small team and a great piece of software, in my opinion. Others may vary. You can leave a comment below if you don’t think so.

Number six, there’s probably got to be another opportunity in there somewhere, but I can’t think of it today. But hopefully, this helps you better understand what the core benefits and cost savings abilities are by using a good piece of transportation management or freight management software. These are things that my team and I grapple with every day and manage, and it’s definitely why I’ve stayed in the logistics and supply chain business because software drives a lot of it. So if you’d like, I can help you drill into your current process, see if there’s any opportunities using our software or pricing, or email even I’ve been in this business a long time. So if it’s not our system, I’d be happy to point you in the right direction to something that I think might work better for you. What comes around goes around, right?

I hope you’re making it a great week. If you want to drill into what your needs are or opportunities are, I’d be happy to help you hash it out. My phone number is 866-854-5341, Ext. 3 or jeremy@easylogisticsmanagement.com. Hope to talk to you soon and thanks for being with me.