Is your transportation business having a hard time lately keeping up with your competition? Have you been struggling with keeping your employees on board? Is your customer service working as hard as ever because your customers won’t stop complaining? If any of these are true – you may need to look into obtaining a TMS or transportation management software.
Any kind of business that is involved with transportation in any way could potentially benefit from a transportation management software. A system like this should create a much more efficient daily operation and transform your fleet into what it should be.
However, we’re not always certain whether we should invest in TMS. Well, if you’re not certain, just look for these signs and if you spot any of them – do yourself a favour and come aboard the TMS train.
1. Your Fleet Is Growing
It’s pretty easy to manage without transportation management software if your feel is counting only a handful of vehicles. However, once your feel starts growing, you’re going to notice how increasingly difficult it becomes to keep track of everything with every additional vehicle. With that in mind, it’s easy to see how lack of transportation management software could even cripple your growth as a business.
On the other hand, if you notice a steady growth and you anticipate that you will have to expand your operation, meaning you’ll take on new employees, new business opportunities and of course, add more vehicles to your fleet – you should definitely set up a TMS software beforehand.
A TMS software should help you ensure your growth process continues uninterrupted.
2. Your Business Needs Are Becoming Increasingly Complex
Once again, when you’re a small transportation o company, your daily tasks are rather simple. You do simple deliveries, your fleet consists of only a handful of vehicles and you have no immediate need for transportation management software. However, if you do the job right for an extended period of time, you’re going to scale up and grow.
Not only are you going to scale up your fleet, but your management and operational needs will become more complex. You’ll need additional help with the logistics, fleet tracking, administration, finances, maintenance, operations and so on. All of these could become easier to deal with alongside quality TMS software.
3. You Want To Keep Your Employees
Last year was very hard on the transportation industry, but even without it, driver retention has been a huge problem for quite some time now. Companies are losing their driver left and right and if you don’t want to take part in it – you should probably add a TMS to your company.
You see, software like this isn’t solely designed to help the administration and the owner of the business. In fact, quality TMS software can improve the quality of work for each and every driver by making the job a lot easier and more enjoyable. With quality software, your driver’s job can be made so much easier.
It could help drivers avoid traffic, spend less time in their vehicles and overall just do a better job with a lot less effort than they previously had to put in. According to Rose Rocket, a company that can keep their drivers is almost guaranteed to become successful and if that’s not enough of a reason to invest in transportation management software, we don’t know what is.
4. You’re Having Administrative Problems
If you’re struggling with your paperwork and administration – it might be time for a change. Using a TMS to automate all accounts could potentially save you a lot of time and effort. You wouldn’t be wasting your resources on cumbersome paperwork with software like this.
Also, this could help minimize the amount of money spent on administrative work, which is always a good thing. Also, with software doing all the work, you’d be virtually eliminating room errors when it comes to billing or invoices. Furthermore, since all of the paperwork can be automated and printed directly using the software, you’d make processing the orders a lot more efficient.
5. Your Cash Flow Isn’t As Great As You Want It To Be
If you seem to be losing money left and right and your operating costs aren’t where you want them to be – investing in transportation management software could be a really good idea.
Not only will the TMS software reduce the shipping and operational costs, but it’ll also improve your cash flow. If you’re more efficient than you ever were – money will start flowing in more frequently. Furthermore, cutting costs should be one of the priorities of every business, including a transportation one.
Cutting transportation operational costs will make a significant difference in your annual budget report. If every route is perfectly analysed and calculated – you’re not losing money, instead, you’re piling it on.
6. You’re Having Trouble Meeting Your Customers’ Expectations
Online shopping has been popular for quite some time now, but last year took it all to a whole another level. Nowadays, customer’s expectations are very high and they want you to meet them.
If you’re someone that delivers goods to customers and you notice a trend of your customers feeling dissatisfied – you might want to take a look at TMS. Customers expect you to fulfil their order as soon as possible and they want you to do with freely, transparently and with complete visibility and tracking of the order.
If you don’t deliver on any of those – you’re at risk of losing customers. Fortunately, transportation management software can help you out with that, by automating the whole process and making the best decisions for your business based on the data and the information it’s working with.
7. You Need It All In One Place
If your operation is becoming too complex to keep track of and you just want all of it in the same place, then you should most definitely add TMS to your arsenal. With quality software, everything from booking to tracking will be in the same place, so that you’ll able to efficiently run your whole operation.
Conclusion
Every transportation business can benefit from TMS software and the sooner you accept that – the sooner you’ll begin to see the results. The environment you’re in is ever-changing and you need something that will help you stay on top of it and transportation management software is just the thing you need.
