A transportation management system (TMS) boasts one of the strongest ROIs of any supply chain management software: an average of about 7.5 percent in freight savings according to recent research by ARC Advisory Group.
But a TMS is also notoriously thorny to implement, thanks in large part to the gap that exists between most TMS systems on the market and the needs of the current transportation industry. Most of today’s systems were originally designed years ago.
In practice, this means that systems oftentimes require complex configuration and setup just to move the first shipment, or that the TMS can’t even handle what the customer needs (or handle it accurately). This gap has caused a large number of TMS implementations to fail to meet their project objectives. In fact, up to 40 percent of implementations by some estimates.
As a first-time TMS buyer, you don’t know what you don’t know. Perhaps you’re not aware of the risk of failure in a TMS implementation, or you ask a vendor with hundreds of customers for a few references and then move forward.