Every business aims to improve efficiency and increase profitability in a big way. The same goes for the trucking businesses. They have always needed a solution that helped them achieve efficiency and profitability simultaneously.
Entered the legacy transportation management system (TMS). A legacy TMS was designed for the technology and framework that existed around 10 or 20 years ago. As we know that the transportation and supply chain industry is ever-evolving, the legacy TMS system has become redundant, expensive, and unable to keep up with the increasing demands of the modern business world.
Replacing legacy systems with a modern TMS has become crucial for trucking companies. Currently, almost all businesses—irrespective of their nature and size—operate at a pace that requires flexibility and agility at a lower cost.
Several legacy TMS vendors have tried to meet this growing demand in the past few years by adding new features to their existing systems. However, this has only resulted in more complicated processes, causing businesses to use more time, energy, and resources than intended. Over the years, companies have realized that they spend more to support legacy systems rather than focusing these resources on expanding their reach and scaling their operations to meet the rising demands of the global business world.
The good news is that you can get rid of the cumbersome legacy TMS and adopt a cloud-based TMS. By partnering with a Cloud TMS, you no longer have to consider scaling your IT infrastructure to meet your growing needs.
With a modern, enterprise cloud-based TMS, businesses can gain a competitive edge in the market by reducing costs and increasing the bottom line like never before. A cloud-based TMS consolidates all your processes and provides you the flexibility and the tools you need to scale and optimize your business.
Let us understand why legacy TMS systems might be doing more harm than good, why they are failing considerably, and why replacing legacy systems with modern TMS is the need of the hour.
Why Are Legacy TMS Systems Failing?
Legacy TMS systems are failing miserably, and rightly so. Modern trucking business no longer needs a solution where they have to rely on a network of disparate systems and outdated technology. It does not offer them fruition and only adds to stress.
The outcomes of using a legacy TMS system are unappealing. The traditional TMS operates mainly within its own silos, lacking the application programming interface (API) capabilities required for flexible integration with other partners.
The classic TMS does not offer companies a 360-degree view of their operations, leading them to uninformed decision-making. Let’s understand how legacy TMS systems are doing more harm than good for trucking companies and how modern TMS can help them overcome these challenges.
Mainly Focused on Costs
A legacy TMS primarily focuses on costs. It addresses the transport process from an internal, cost-optimization planning perspective. For instance, it mainly addresses the question: how can we move goods from point A to point B cost-efficiently?
Ever since the supply chain industry has become increasingly complex and challenging, transportation has shifted from being only a supporting service to giving shippers a competitive edge and point of differentiation in the market.
This has been especially relevant during the global pandemic when reducing transportation costs became a secondary problem and delivering essential items to people worldwide as quickly and reliably as possible became primary.
Adds Less Value to Customer Experience
The top three reasons for investing in a TMS system are to increase operational efficiencies, improve visibility, and control costs. Most trucking companies look forward to investing in the right technology so they can automate their processes, strengthen their logistics functions, reduce paperwork, and increase their bottom line.
However, the problem is that not every TMS, especially legacy TMS, is created that way. Traditional TMS systems do not support the visibility, integrated workflows, and collaboration that today’s companies demand. Consequently, these legacy systems continue to operate mainly as silos, sticking to their original aims of reducing transportation costs.
With such TMS systems in place, you cannot expect to provide proactive customer service without any 360-degree view of your operations and hence add no value to your customer experience.
Lack of Supply Chain Visibility
For many trucking companies, the ongoing quest for complete supply chain visibility is ruthlessly hampered by timeworn, legacy TMS technology. With our supply chain industry becoming increasingly complex and highly challenging, it becomes crucial for trucking companies to have end-to-end visibility and provide high levels of customer service. With no real-time visibility, companies cannot exercise control over their fleet and assets.
Replacing Legacy Systems – Make an Impact with Modern TMS
A modern TMS is one that’s designed for the next generation of supply chains. Companies involved in the supply chain, transportation, and logistics must consider modern cloud-based TMS software as part of their technology investment strategies. By doing this, they can avoid falling behind their competitors.
Replacing legacy systems with modern TMS is certainly the need of the hour. The TMS market is growing faster, and the need for advanced technology that effectively manages optimizes, and expedites transportation is increasing exponentially.
Where the legacy TMS systems focus on sourcing, planning, execution, and settlements, cloud-based modern TMS systems include real-time insights, monitoring, and collaboration to the whole package.
A modern TMS system provides a dynamic platform to the companies that they can customize as per their needs. Trucking companies can reduce shipping costs and offer value to their customers. Overall, it increases your operational efficiency through optimization and automation, putting paperback at the backseat.
Companies can obtain business intelligence through modern TMS and improve their processes. They can better control their shipments as cloud-based TMS provides them with real-time end-to-end visibility into their shipments, fleets, and drivers. Last but not least, companies can grow their bottom line by employing the right modern TMS and replacing legacy systems.
Modern TMS helps improve transparency across the entire supply chain cycle and provides the right information to the right people at the right time. Moreover, it also helps transform data from multiple systems into actionable insights.
Truck owners and fleet managers can know the exact location of their trucks, drivers, and loads. They can also receive detailed information about freight spending. With the help of a modern enterprise TMS system, companies can keep delivering shipments in the most cost-efficient way, while meeting customers’ growing demands.