Nothing and we say NOTHING tastes sweeter, smells better and looks more bewitching than success. And to attain this end goal of enterprise, it is the primary obligation of any organisation to work upon and optimise their available resources. And in the ever-so-evolving world of logistics, success comes from channelising and strengthening their transport management system. To delineate the significance of an effective TMS in the corpus of a logistics company, let us resort to the analogy of a castle. Now we all know that castles are those structures that are built to maximise security and safeguard the inhabitants. Therein lies the success of the objective of a castle. If we draw a parallel of a company with a castle, we have to say that the ramparts are akin to an efficient TMS. It provides the basis of the foundation, centring and owing to which further fortification can take place. From the medieval world of forts and fortresses, we alight to the modern world of business now and try to sum up and enumerate some of the countless modes and measures through which a competent TMS adds worth to a business.
It is a statement oft-repeated and now verging on the borders of becoming hackneyed that the world of logistics, along with the world in broader terms, is changing, has changed and will change. Commensurate with the age-old adage that change is the only constant thing in the world, logistics has kept in pace with the perennial flux of the world. And if the service providers do not keep pace with the socio-political, economical, environmental demands of the world at large, they would stand at the precarious position of getting perished. It is only a better TMS that can don the garb of a superhero and act as a saving grace. The fundamental efficacy of traditional TMS lies in effective transportation, as the very jargon implies. But in this complex scenario, when the companies are aiming at better customer satisfaction, less fallow time and optimisation of resources available and everything concurrent in a cost-effective way, TMS has gone beyond its precincts and has wedded the other logistics solutions and has doused itself in the cascade called technology.
TMS is no longer an autonomous unit that would rely on order management solutions to curate data for the former so that it can work upon the data for smooth transit. It has branched out to other roles thereby adapting a holistic approach towards the end-to-end chain of supply. Apart from the obvious functionality of leveraging shippers, carriers, lading, picking, packing, TMS has now active role to play in its former less-trodden sectors of sourcing and in-bound supply.
Furthermore, keeping tab with the multi-party demands of visibility, modern TMS has developed live tracking and tracing policies. The in-built features of alerts notify the shippers of any anomaly and give them the time and the scope to take recourse to corrective measures. It is needless to say that such transparency in business dealings earns a company a pool of loyal customers, good-will and ultimately helps in raking profit.
With the complexity of the global context being gradually accrued, there seems to be a growing demand for multi-modal and multi-leg shipments. With the astute convergence of planning and execution done by TMS, such a heady task can be achieved with a lot of ease. There are many companies who are reaping the fruit of the efforts they had put in cross-docking facilitated by their active transportation management. And if we yoke the rubrics of real-time visibility and multi-modality together, we boil down our argument to the need-of-the-hour, i.e. route optimisation. The impact of TMS on routing is a thing that can never be avoided. It always had the power of making or marring the image of the companies before the stakeholders.
On this note, one must also mention that the modern transport management solutions use software solutions that are easy for the task of data integration. As it has been pointed earlier that TMS has assumed an all-encompassing part in the logistics universe, it becomes seminal that seamless integration, transfer and re-modelling of data of the other units of business happen with the former. While the traditional mode of TMS had restrictive rubrics and other expensive tools had to be employed to achieve this target, the modern TMS has in-built features, is cloud-based, highly adaptable and automated for a better user experience and obviously to curtain the expenses.
The guardian-like image of TMS goes further into the inner portals of business intelligence and analytics. It has the power to gauge the profitability of the partners and the ventures and thereby adding massive force to the business. It can also be added that in this world where expansive information has come to the finger tips of every individual, consumers have become much more aware than they were even a decade ago. Hence, the organisations that a company tie-up with do create an impact on the decision-making of the customers. Thus TMS, in a far-fetched way, also helps in brand-building and image-building.
Following the strains of all the former points, we come to the ultimate and perhaps a very relevant prerequisite of success. The parameters of the fruition of the labour nowadays are closely associated with a company’s sustainability goals. The more considerate a company is regarding its carbon footprints, the better impression is created amongst the stakeholders. A proper groundwork in procurement of resources, route optimisation, sensible selection of carriers, filling vacuums, automation and shift towards AI can help reduce/manage carbon footprints and influence the market. This design is laid down by the modern TMS, circumscribing the entire logistics framework.
Keeping the whole discourse to the fore, it is safe to say that an efficient transportation management system provides the blueprint of success by leveraging the available resources in the best possible ways and also by keeping stock of the inventory that the data has become. By taking care of the individual order as well as by safeguarding the entire logistics planet, TMS has become a force to reckon with, which can operate in tandem on the planes of the macrocosm and the microcosm both and to sterling effects.