Is your TMS software unable to deliver what it promised? Outdated transportation management systems can lead to poor operational efficiencies, staff frustrations, and ultimately a negative impact to your bottom line.
How to tell if you need a new TMS software?
While an ongoing struggle to manage your operations is a clear sign, there are several other well-defined checks that provide you with a definite answer.
Unable to Scale
Small trucking operators often use cost as a deciding factor for TMS selection. While cost is an important factor, they often lack the visibility into their future needs as their business grows. Most entry level TMS solutions are not designed to address scalability. They often cannot handle the increased workload, additional users, and large transaction data without sacrificing performance. With scalability limitation, your trucking business is essentially “boxed” resulting in serious business growth challenges costing you time and money.
Limited Partners or System Integration
TMS software specific to trucking are often purpose built to leverage the extensive functionality and efficiency that third party integration partners provide. A complete TMS solution such as PowerPRO seamlessly integrate with industry leaders such as Samsara, Wex, ORBCOMM, Prophesy, a wide range of load visibility partners including Descartes, and more!
The purpose of any TMS is to bring together your supply chain connections into a single platform. The ease of connecting with partners is an absolute must, enabling faster decision-making and issue resolution, further improving the efficiency and effectiveness of your trucking operation. If your TMS software lacks partner integration or has a very limited number of partners, this will create a huge competitive disadvantage against your competitors.
Requires Manual Data Processing
A top-tier TMS software should offer core functionality modules such as dispatch management, settlement/payroll, and IFTA Tax. Additionally, it should expand your business efficiency by offering optional modules such as EDI and fleet maintenance. If your staff is using standalone additional software(s) to complete their tasks, that’s a good indication that your TMS lacks full functionality to support your business operations. Additionally, using multiple systems to complete the work results in data silos that hinder the efficiency of your operations and hide insights that are available through a single data source TMS solution.
Frustrating Customer Support and Updates
A good TMS software should continue to provide timely software updates to make your business stay current with new features in a rapidly changing marketplace. If you have never heard anything about functionality updates from your TMS vendor, it is likely badly outdated. A TMS vendors that takes weeks or even months to address a simple support request, is another sign your TMS is not up to modern industry standards. Additionally, if your customer support experience is more like a call center, your staff is losing valuable time with significant frustrations every time they call for help.
No End-to-end Process Visibility
A modern TMS should provide clear visibility at every step of your business process to allow customers and partners up to date information. Additionally, carrier tracking is an important piece for trucking business.If you broker a load to an outside carrier, TMS can track that carrier through carrier’s ELD or the driver’s phone running app such as MacroPoint. If your TMS lacks this feature, you know what it means.
As evident from the pain points outlined above, an inadequate TMS with limited functionality and poor integration capabilities is sure way to ruin your trucking business. Most carriers don’t stick with an outdated system because they like it. They stay because change feels highly risky. If you are experiencing similar issues with your TMS, it may be time to consider upgrading to a more modern solution like PowerPRO.
