The most dynamic form of routing is focused on e-commerce home deliveries. The importance of routing starts right at the point of purchase on a web site. The choices given to consumers from the routing engine should help to maximize profitability for the retailer.
Robust Routing Plays a Critical Role in Omni-channel Fulfillment
↧
↧
8 Things Keeping Supply Chain Professionals up at Night
As 2017 fast approaches, shippers are hard at work forecasting what the new year may bring. Unfortunately, with this planning comes a host of trends and challenges that leave supply chain professionals feeling uneasy. Pressure to reduce transportation costs, adapt to changing customer demands and a constantly changing, uncertain market are constantly on the minds of shippers, but here are a few trends and challenges that are keeping supply chain professionals up at night. The […]
↧
Getting (Even) More from Your Transportation Management Solution
Getting benefits from a modern transportation management solution that has just gone live is just the first wave of value available. There’s a lot more that can be gained when companies recognize that transportation management solutions are more than execution systems. With the ability to model alternate scenarios, logistics organizations can more accurately model the benefits and challenges of proposed changes to transportation strategies and processes, and continue to enhance the business value they receive […]
↧
Creating a More Stable Environment for Navigating Demand and Rate Changes Using Transportation Optimization
A sophisticated transportation management system (TMS) can help companies overcome the challenges of modern shipping. Transportation modeling technology can help shippers evaluate the effects of uncertainty and variability in their networks. In this way, they can effectively manage logistics across an entire, dispersed ecosystem. Modeling helps users to understand and prepare for the impact of any potential changes before they are operationalized. These changes can range from expanding networks to carrier flux or even to growing businesses, all of which require adjustments to logistics.
↧
What Fleet Routing Solution is Right for My Company?
The idea that a supply chain solution should not be a “black box” solution – a solution that forces planners to blindly trust the output of the optimization engine – has been around for close to twenty years. In transportation, the need for this has been glaringly obvious because of all the parameters that can go into a “solve.”
↧
↧
Why RFPs Don’t Work for Transportation Management Systems
To help you deliver freight at the lowest cost that meets customer requirements, a transportation management system (TMS) has to learn and understand the complexities of your particular business. This level of intimacy, however, is often not appreciated by first-time TMS purchasers. I see many companies make their TMS vendor selection as if they were buying accounting, HR or other back office software – and this approach is typical when finance leads the selection or […]
↧
Four Steps for Wider, Deeper Use of Your TMS
We all know transportation management systems (TMS) are cost savers. They help us automate processes, gain visibility, and manage movement more effectively. However, to continually achieve year over year cost savings, it is important to evaluate your current processes and look for ways to achieve wider, deeper use of your TMS. One of the most famous methods used for continuous improvement is the “Shewhart Cycle” also known as PDSA. American engineer W. Edwards Demming made […]
↧
A Sneak Peak into the Future of the TMS Market
Over the last 4 years, I have released an annual analysis of the global transportation management systems (TMS) market. The research combines the analysis of large amounts of information with interviews with executives from numerous TMS software companies. The end result is the publication of ARC’s TMS Global Market Research Study, which analyzes the market shares across numerous categories of the leading TMS suppliers. I am in the process of kicking off that research once […]
↧
A Second Chance at a First Impression
E-commerce businesses are continuing to allocate more resources and energy into building a consumer-driven supply chain. As the work unfolds, one thing is clear – the end delivery is becoming the new handshake between consumers and brands. Today, customer experience plays as much of a vital role for consumers as product quality and price. In fact, 76% of consumers say they view this experience as the true test of how much a company values them. […]
↧
↧
ERP + TMS: The Best of Both Worlds
Does your business need a Transportation Management System (TMS) or an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system? For supply chain managers, the answer to this question is increasingly becoming “all of the above.” Over the last 30 years, Enterprise Resourcing Planning (ERP) systems have evolved into large-scale systems that form the foundation for most modern businesses. The ERP is a nearly ubiquitous system used by thousands of organizations to manage business information, providing a high-level view […]
↧
Descartes Evolution – Logistics Excellence: Now and in the E-Future
Last week, I attended the annual Descartes Systems Group User conference in sunny West Palm Beach, FL. This was my second time attending the event, and once again, it did not disappoint. This was the largest event yet for Descartes, with well over 400 attendees at this year’s conference. I managed to catch some really interesting sessions featuring Descartes employees as well as some great case study sessions, including Clean Harbors, BC Sands, and CVS. […]
↧
Fighting Carrier’s Complex DIM Weight Rules to Save Money
In 2015 when the largest parcel carriers introduced DIM Weight rules, making smart decisions on parcel shipments got much harder. Saving money on ecommerce shipping requires concurrently optimizing across various carrier services, their DIM rate rules, and clever cartonization. A new solution solves this complex problem.
↧
Lost in Deployment Model Jargon?
The logistics world is full of jargon and sometimes we only have a vague understanding of what certain terms mean, especially when it comes to software. Some of the most confusing ones pop up in conversations about transportation management system (TMS) deployment model options: SaaS, private cloud, or on-premise are common ones. These terms are understandably confusing to the “normal” person who doesn’t live and breathe software every day. The best model for your organization […]
↧
↧
Are We at a Tipping Point for Logistics Technology Value?
I’m beginning to wonder if we have hit an inflection point where investment in logistics technology will broadly create business performance gaps. We recently partnered with several organizations to look at business strategies, tactics and logistics technology. The message was clear – investing in technology was the number one strategy. However, success doesn’t necessarily look so certain as there was clearly a difference in spending between the “haves” and “have nots”. Will we see a […]
↧
Competing in an Amazon World – Technology is the Key
One of the most discussed topics in supply chain management today is the “Amazon Effect.” Clearly, the Amazon business model has affected many industries, including retail, manufacturing and distribution. Consumers now expect — and get — free next-day or second-day delivery on everything from electronics to shoes. To ask your customers to accept anything less in an Amazon world would be like telling your teenager that their iPhone is going away, but they are welcome […]
↧
Cloud: The Driving Force for TMS and Other Industry Trends
ARC Advisory Group conducts an annual analysis of the global transportation management systems (TMS) market. The research process includes the analysis of large amounts of information and interviews with executives from numerous TMS software companies. The process concludes with the publication of ARC’s TMS Global Market Research Study, which analyzes the market shares across numerous categories of the leading TMS suppliers. Aside from the market share analysis, the study looks at the trends that are […]
↧
High Touch, Blended Transportation Management Solutions Can Reduce Freight Costs
Blended solutions are emerging - part transportation management system, part managed services. This case study explore the benefits one shipper got from this solution.
↧
↧
Getting Paid: Why AR Matters in your TMS
Figuring out the right TMS for your business typically boils down to your vendor’s data structure, which affects every facet of the software. One way to know whether the TMS will work for your needs is to look at its accounts receivable capabilities (AR). This is where the data structure really comes to light. What’s so important about AR? Think of an AR record as a sell-side load. While a load is essentially an intermediate […]
↧
Collaborating Across Supply Chains Is Here. I’ll Show You How.
We’re all operating in a social world and communicating through software. It’s what we do. So where the old days of logistics management were focused on getting cheaper carrier rates, companies operating in today’s freight environment must focus on collaboration—both with carriers and with one another. So how can a company go about gaining new efficiencies by collaborating across supply chains without disrupting current logistics processes? The Answer Lies in the Cloud Cloud-based transportation software […]
↧
America’s Infrastructure Remains a Topic of Spirited Debate: How Can TMS Help Users of the Nation’s Highways Avoid Potholes?
Infrastructure is a topic most of us don’t think about. We just expect it to work in the same way we expect the lights to come on when we flip a switch. However, there has been increasing concern by trucking companies, shippers, and even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that the infrastructure we all count on – safe roads, bridges, waterways– is showing its age and in need of repair. That is not surprising when […]
↧
More Pages to Explore .....
