6 Benefits of Logistics Automation in a TMS

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Decrease in Costly Errors: Logistics automation features such as integration to your commodities via your ERP system and access to your address book, as well as automatic storage and entry of fuel surcharges and accessorials, will have you never again worrying about keying in the wrong information. These kinds of manual data entry errors will lead to increased shipping costs such as having to pay for shipping twice or paying a higher freight rate due to entering an incorrect commodity freight classification.

Availability of Transportation Mode Choice and Real Time Freight Rates: To combat rising transportation costs the logistics automation features in a TMS makes it easy for users around the country to execute policies that deliver immediate freight savings. That means the TMS application is built with a state-of-the-art web services architecture, in order to receive live carrier rates over the Internet. No more theoretical savings, but hard ROI based on live, vendor neutral access to real-time market rates. When you have multiple carriers to choose from based on cost, transit time, and insurance, it empowers you to make the best choice for your specific shipment, thus saving you money over the long haul.

Increased Customer Service: How much does it cost for you to LOSE a customer? With logistics automation features in a TMS such as real time freight tracking, auto pick-up, proper insurance and freight accounting built to your custom specifications, you and your customer are empowered to know exactly how much the freight will cost and when the freight will arrive at it's destination through automatic notifications. 

 
Access to Real Time Freight Data and Analysis: When you have access to real time freight data and the ability to run reports, you are better served at making better business decisions based on your trends and history. For example, you may find out through the data that 80% of the time you picked Carrier "A" because they were the least cost carrier, but you find out in the data that that carrier is late 20% of the time, causing you to create a stigma of bad customer service. In the long run, creating such a bad stigma so you can save money on the front end of shipping, could hurt you over and above the freight savings by not being able to gain new customers or possibly losing customers. Access to valuable data at your fingertips with the push of a button empowers you to see the total cost of your decisions and mitigate future expensive bad decisions.

Organizational Control: With logistics automation features in a TMS you are able to regain control over freight management, freight costs, and risk, by using the TMS' rules engine, which is based on optimized plans and routing guides. A TMS is flexible enough to accommodate custom company business rules, yet powerful enough to force all users, both internal and external, to follow the policies that ensure efficient and cost effective shipping. The system’s usability must be such that controls can be designed and implemented by logistics experts with decades of hands-on experience in logistics, rather than by computer technicians.

Scalability and Speed: With such powerful logistics automation features in your TMS there are no additional resources needed to manage your logistics, freight, and transportation departments, even as your business grows and ships more freight. As your company grows and ships more freight, a TMS allows you to easily input new users into the system and manage them easily. Furthermore, with a great freight accounting automation feature within the TMS, all freight invoices can be consolidated into one weekly invoice, no matter how many shipments each location has, making your CFO or controller's job much easier to manage!