With the increasing complexity of the global supply chains, the path that goods follow also becomes difficult. Although a small business may be able to track things using spreadsheets and manual checkups, at the end of the day, it is incredibly less efficient. The movements wouldn’t be able to be managed as your business will grow and the shipment volume will increase. At this instant, transport management software can rescue you from all the issues of shipment management. It can help in moving your freight efficiently, reliably, and affordably. A transport management software will help you save delivery time, decrease logistics costs, boost warehouse performance, reduce product dispatching issues, and improve overall supply chain efficiency.
As per Gartner’s report, the transport management system market will hit a valuation of $2.11 billion by 2024. With the growth of e-commerce and cross-border trades, the transport industry has witnessed exponential growth. That’s why developing transport management software seems to be a great idea. In this article, we will review the several benefits of transport management software.
What is Transport Management Software?
Transport management software is designed to help companies involved in supply chain and distribution by automating planning, executing, and optimizing activities related to goods or fleet movement. It is an excellent solution for manufacturing, distribution, e-commerce, wholesale, retail, and other businesses. Simply put, a TMS is a complex yet easy-to-use tool that streamlines the shipment processes of your company and brings high transparency.
Note: Many people consider transport management software to be another name for fleet management software, but these two are different. Although they have interconnected features, the significant difference is that FMS gives you visibility of the real-time location of vehicles. At the same time, TMS brings transparency to daily operations, such as planning and execution.
Key Benefits of Implementing Transportation Management Software:
There are a plethora of ways by which your business can benefit from transportation software development. Here are the primary ways a TMS will benefit your business:
- Cost Minimization:
With a transportation management system, you can optimize resources and asset utilization in your business on different parameters like costs, order groupings, stop counts, etc.
If you implement AI in your TMS, it will create optimal delivery routes while meeting safety and other transportation needs. The TMS will generate the most efficient scenarios from your location to your destination while considering schedules, employee shifts, time windows, and loading capacities. This will help you get a better grip on your business which will ultimately reduce the operational and other overhead expenses.
- Real-time Tracking of Shipment:
By leveraging technologies like GPS, there are built-in technologies in TMS that can track shipments and assets in real-time and send alerts to achieve any key milestone. These essential updates can be shared with all the involved departments and parties so everyone knows the shipment location and all are in synchronization.
As per Business Wire, 30% of the companies find that they were able to deliver better customer satisfaction after integrating transport management systems. Real-time visibility also improves the accountability of each entity involved in fulfillment.
- Automated Load Planning:
A software development company like ours builds TMS with automatic load planning and pairing algorithms that can accurately match each shipment with a suitable carrier or vehicle. In the algorithm, there are specific parameters fed like delivery location, size of the shipment, transport costs, etc.
Thus you aren’t required to put brains into this planning and are just needed to select the consignment to be shipped.
- Digitally manage finance and documentation:
With TMS, you can digitize essential documents, such as shipping records, paperwork, shipment documents, permissions, etc. Thus, you don’t need to go through a massive pile of paper to find a single document. It reduces human errors and saves time while reducing transit times at customs and checkpoints.
Moreover, it also brings automation in invoice management, billings, and any extra charges and penalties. Thus, automation in finance management and documentation will reduce manual work and human errors, which account for an additional 20% of shipping costs.
With real-time financial information, firms can monitor transport costs and budget allocation, as well as manage allocation among multiple carriers.
- Performance Evaluation and Analysis:
A top-notch transport management software has in-built techniques for performance benchmarking by which businesses can set KPIs across all vendors efficiently. This is a very important analysis for finding a suitable set of vendors for your shipments, enhancing overall productivity.
A TMS solution can consolidate vendor, shipments, and other services data, which helps streamline performance evaluation, make decisions, and promote strong relationships with your transport partners.
- Analytics and Reporting:
There are built-in data analytics and reporting features in the transport management software and these features help in leveraging the data of your operational and organizational activities effectively. It can help you find hidden patterns or trends like delays by a particular carrier, incorrect deliveries, and shipment costs.
The data is also fed into reporting tools, creating easy-to-understand reports in any format. This facilitates strategic decision-making within your business. This powerful analytics system lowers the need for third-party data analytics and reporting services, lowering operational costs.
The built-in analytics and reporting tools directly provide key executives (CXOs) actionable insights, allowing them to make better-educated and cost-effective business decisions.
- Intelligent Proof of Delivery (PoD) Management:
At the time of delivery, both customers and delivery staff have to attach the proofs of delivery like photos and videos. The images can be of the delivery location or products to improve transparency within the system. It is called electronic Proof of Delivery (PoD).
PoD aims to improve overall customer feedback and monitor driver activities, such as any attempt for faster delivery or incorrect deliveries. Customers can communicate through any channel if they have any issues with the delivery.
If drivers face any difficulty with delivery, they can also select any reason from the predefined list. Thus, it promotes smoother operations and customer satisfaction.
Wrapping Up:
In this article, we have mentioned the significant benefits of transport management software. However, these benefits are achieved when you opt for a top-notch software development company like us for transport management software development. At Octal, we provide the best software development services with advanced features and functionalities. With more than two decades of experience developing software, apps, and web applications, our team has gained practical experience creating logistics solutions and developing transport software. Let us know your requirements.
