TMS software: the tool your supply chain is missing

Digitising your Supply Chain has become essential to guaranteeing your company’s profitability. Focus on TMS software, the digital tool your supply chain is missing.

What will the warehouse of the future look like? This is the question being asked by both logistics function managers and operators throughout the chain, from the first to the last kilometre. Faced with constant change in the transport sector, implementing efficient, automated management methods is a major concern for every logistics specialist. Which digital solutions should you choose? Is TMS software the right tool to integrate into the supply chain? What are its advantages? DDS answers your questions.

Why is it vital to digitise your Supply Chain?

The Supply Chain covers all the logistics operations concerning your company: from the raw material supply chain to delivery of the finished product to the end customer.

Its management is complex, due to the number and diversity of the basic operations involved (handling, internal flow management, management of transport service providers, packaging, etc.).

What’s more, most of these tasks are interdependent. To facilitate optimisation of the whole, exemplary traceability is required. How do you achieve this level of requirement?

Implementing logistics ERP software

If you want a smooth, profitable supply chain, you need to digitise and bundle your digital solutions.

Companies need to implement ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software to centralise and manage their internal and external flow modules.

All the company’s flows come into play:

• physical flows (goods inwards, handling generated by order preparation, production, etc.) ;
• data flows (freight forwarder rates, vehicle lists, truck driver lists, employee holiday schedules, legal documents for transporting goods, etc.).

For your logistics management, the two major ERPs are the WMS and the TMS, each with different uses.

WMS – Warehouse Management System

The WMS (Warehouse Management System) is the warehouse management tool.

It’s the key to efficient stock management. Its main purpose is to ensure the management and traceability of your storage space throughout your logistics operations.

It is the chain’s operational aid, ensuring that your production is never short of anything.

TMS software – Transport Management System

What would a production unit do without transport management? Absolutely nothing!

Transport management, on both the supply and shipping sides, is an integral part of the overall logistics of a production unit or a sales unit.

Coordinating upstream logistics with last-mile logistics is the key to achieving your company’s objectives:

• financial
• customer satisfaction
• environmental,
• organisational,
• human resources.

Faced with this major challenge, automating transport management is your trump card.

The TMS (Transport Management System) tool developed by logistics solutions publishers offers the optimum digital solution (DDS’s TMS, for example).

It allows you to finely control the management of vehicles and drivers, as well as the management of transported parcels.

Upstream, it solves congestion problems on platform platforms.

TMS, the digital solution for managing your transport operations

A TMS is first and foremost a tool for managing logistics flows.

Designed to simplify transport management, this software is installed directly on your line. It facilitates the management of all transport operations, from the first to the last kilometre, both upstream of production and downstream.

The TMS is a veritable digital Swiss army knife for Supply Chain Management (SCM).

It is also a tool that reduces the time-consuming and dispersive nature of transport operations.

Weary of manual or semi-manual operations, which combine a non-negligible number of digital and non-digital tools (Excel spreadsheets, paper filing cabinets, etc.), operators focus their efforts on their trade and not on organisation.

The digital solution that improves your transport performance

One of the challenges facing logistics is to optimise in terms of cost, profitability, quality of service and environmental footprint.

The traceability of selected performance indicators (empty return rate, service rate, transport cost per product and per category, carbon emission rate, fuel consumption per 100 km, etc.) will enable these KPIs (performance indicators) to be monitored in real time and analysed in detail.

For example, thanks to the TMS and the Green Move Calculator module, you can access data enabling you to calculate the exact CO2 emissions for each journey, and for other time units (day, week, month) depending on your choices.

In real time, your company has access to its requirements for reducing and offsetting its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the major challenge facing Europe over the next ten years.

The TMS tool, an invaluable decision-making aid

The implementation of ERP software provides invaluable support for logistics decision-makers.

In a single tool, they bring together all the performance measures and objectives of each of the company’s functions (finance, accounting, strategy, transport, marketing and human resources).

The detailed analysis of these results is undoubtedly an aid to decision-making. Saving time is a major advantage.

The advantages of digital tools: TMS software

Generally speaking, TMS-type transport software offers modules for controlling the various functions.

The delivery function

This function requires methodical organisation: parcels must be labelled with care and precision, stored awaiting delivery and then dispatched in a predefined order to the end customer.

Carriers load these deliveries at the shipping platforms and take them to their destination.

The management of unforeseen events and customer returns is integrated right from the dispatch stage, and is made efficient by detailed labelling that follows the product throughout its journey.

This function is facilitated by a TMS tool that controls :

• making appointments with carriers
• scheduling deliveries
• allocating parcels (or batches) according to criteria such as volume, weight or lead time,
• track and trace of upstream and downstream flows.

The TMS software documentation function

The transport documents (delivery note, proof of delivery, loading declaration, consignment note, as well as the documents intrinsic to the transport of dangerous goods if necessary) circulate between the various protagonists.

The consignor, the driver and the intermediary customer (freight forwarder, for example) must be in possession of these documents.

Digital transmission of these documents (via the TMS) facilitates management and archiving.

The quality function of TMS software

Customer satisfaction contributes to a company’s profitability.

👉 Whether in retail or e-commerce, customers’ opinions depend on logistical know-how.

A product delivered on time (or even early), in excellent condition, guarantees high customer satisfaction.

Effective communication at every stage in the delivery process ensures efficient customer care.

This is made possible by the automation and pooling of delivery information via the TMS.

A text message can be automatically sent to the customer at each stage.

The accounting function

The TMS modules include the option of pre-billing.

This is an important lever for the company’s accounting function, whose tasks are made easier in this way.

Contact DDS

A TMS project is built hand in hand between you and us, the logistics solutions provider.

Our teams take your specifications into account to offer you the best solution for your core business.