Friday, November 25, 2011

Can Your TMS Handle Strategies?

Recently, I was struck by how many companies under utilize their TMS software only to execute day to day freight management activities as opposed to implementing, managing and measuring results of transportation strategies.

Order processing, route creation, carrier selection, tendering, settlement etc. are all base functions of most TMS. However, does your TMS allow you to quickly implement, manage and measure results of transpotation management strategies? An example would be senior management wanting to implement an inbound freight management program that would reduce landed cost by 15%.

Can your TMS handle these kinds of requests without consuming a large part of your time and requiring the use of Excel Spreadsheets? If it can, maybe you never implemented "Phase II" of your TMS Project. If it cannot, you should evaluate the ROI of upgrading to a TMS that can!

Friday, October 28, 2011

TMS in the MS Azure Cloud

We are extremely pleased to announce our move to Microsoft's Azure Cloud Services at this year's Dynamics ERP user conference Nov 9-11 in Las Vegas, NV. Dynamics ERP users will now have the option to use the DynamicsTMS NEXTrack Internet Collaboration Portal either in an "on-premise" or a "Microsoft Azure Cloud" offering. Being an early participant in the Microsoft Azure CTP, AzureTMS is written exclusively to leverage all Azures functionality including AzureSQL, AzureStorage, AppFabric along with exceptional Azure's global redundancy and scalability features.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

When Is A TMS Not A TMS?

Transportation expenses as a percentage of sales continues to climb and need to be managed on a strategic as well as a transactional basis. Consequently, we have seen an explosion of companies requesting and utilizing (TMS) transportation management software to help them decrease costs and improve customer service for inbound, outbound and transfer freight movements.

Unfortunately, many of the existing enterprise ERP and "supply chain" solutions do not adequately address all the present and future transportation management needs. Enterprise level transportation management requirements and customers have become much more sophisticated.

In recent demos we have conducted with prospects, the claim that one solution can be "all things to all people" is being seriously challenged.

Concurrently, it seems that our definition of what comprises a TMS varies tremendously. The term "TMS" itself has degenerated into a catch all phrase that encompasses anything and everything in transportation just like "Cloud" now means everything Internet. See Wikipedia's TMS Definition.

Certainly, each company has different transportation requirements which range widely in complexity, but respectfully, for software to be considered a true transportation management solution, or for software vendors to "tag" their software as a TMS, it should have more functionality than loading a truck, assigning a carrier or costing out a load.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 & FreightMaster TMS 5.0: A Perfect Match

In their recent 2011 Dynamics Technology Conference in Redmond last month, Microsoft unveiled their new flagship ERP, Dynamics AX 2012. The new ERP software has undergone a major upgrade leveraging Microsoft technologies such as SQL 2008R2, SQL Reporting Services (SSRS)and application integration utilizing Visual Studio 2010.

The great news is that it is exactly the technology that FreightMaster TMS 5.0 utilizes. Written to leverage .NET 4.0 and WCF as well as other core Microsoft technologies, TMS can now be launched from within the new and improved AX Business Portal making it the perfect "kissin cousin" to AX 2012 in look, touch, feel and technology.

See both at the upcoming Dynamics Convergence 2011 Conference in Atlanta this April.