As I’ve seen on many recent projects,
transportation management systems (TMS) are quickly becoming one of the most sought after supply chain IT systems. It’s also been shown that over the past two lean years, the TMS market has fared better than the WMS market.
And due to consumer demand, they are coming into their own like a souped up Mr. Potato Head, adding and re-positioning any necessary parts.
From a business strategy perspective, the perennial factors driving the strong demand for TMS applications are the ability to: (1) reduce transportation spend today and (2) provide more nimble transportation processes as supply chain challenges emerge – whether they manifest themselves in rising fuel costs, resource utilization constraints, global/regional disruptions, and on and on.
From a technology perspective, there are a number of other factors contributing to the TMS market growth:
Functionality -TMS applications have become robust, offering additional modules that were only supported by niche players several years ago. For example, software for Global Trade Management and Financial Settlement were application markets several years ago, but can now be found in the more robust TMS offerings.
Deployment & Configuration Options – TMS providers have embraced software as a service (SaaS) deployment and service-oriented architecture (SOA) platforms, enabling much more cost-effective and functionally adaptable solutions than predecessor applications.
Upgrade Opportunities – Existing TMS customers faced with functional trade-offs or custom modifications and the resulting costly upgrades now have new options to consider. Many customers are turning traditional upgrade efforts into a competitive bid situation and evaluate the changes in the TMS market.
Taking these factors for market growth into account, (if you have one) where does your TMS stand? Is it lacking a necessary module, like Mr. Potato Head with a missing nose?
If you don’t have a TMS, now may be a good time to begin your research. In my next blog post, I’ll talk more about evaluating your TMS strategy.
-- Kevin
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Tags: transportation management systems, functionality, it systems