What's the risk behind outdated TMS?

Peter Gyde, SVP Partnerships & Head of GTM - Freightify | 14th May, 2024

Evolution of TMS and the Current Landscape

61% of logistics professionals, irrespective of firm size, use some form of TMS today, vs. 15% in 2005, according to a report from Activant Capital.

TMSs have created an incredible amount of logistics execution management value to date.

As the supply chain grows ever more complex, customers are asking for greater functionality – such as procuring freight rates & capacity, integrated carrier bookings, real-time cargo visibility, extending into the warehouse, and handling multiple transportation modalities. Traditional TMS vendors have been slow to react while  technology rapidly develops and opens additional use cases resulting  in gaps having emerged in the existing TMS solutions. According to a recent survey, only 60% of current TMS providers offer procurement & sourcing, only 50% offer warehouse management capabilities, and visibility solutions remain surprisingly simplistic, a lot of ‘dots on a map’, as do post-shipment reporting and analytics.

What are the end users looking for?

Surveys suggest a typical manual rate search amongst a span of carriers may take up to 48 hours to collect feedback. Creating a quote can take 30 minutes. Distributing procured rates to branch offices a further 24 hours. In reality by the time the rate reaches the end user there is a high risk the market has already moved up or down.  The risk of human errors in manually handling complex and large amounts of data are apparent. Digitizing and making the rate management processes instant is critical to being competitive.

There is a new category of tech that the end users in supply chains are looking for - that integrate into and improve existing TMS solutions, whether through simplifying cross-platform communication,