When companies find that they have no data to make decisions on and their freight payment issues are overwhelming, they often don’t reach for the right solution. Rather, they try to solve these two problems by implementing a transportation management system (TMS), which often only makes the problem worse.
Sometimes A New TMS Makes Things Worse, Not Better
Here’s a scenario that we often see: A company’s invoice data is not matching the shipment record in the TMS so they have to spend a tremendous amount of time manually matching the data or cleaning the data by hand to make it compatible. Their track & trace data (EDI 214) isn’t matching the original shipment and they have no place to save the track & trace data for the shipments that weren’t tendered with their TMS, so they have no visibility. At this point they might have their logistics coordinators working on all the freight payment issues because they are 90+ days past due on many of their carrier’s invoices. They expected their new TMS to make these functions easier and deliver rich data that they can use to make decisions with, but instead the tendering of freight has become even more complicated with many exceptions such as rejected tenders, shipments that won’t plan, which must be manually resolved. So, the company now must hire a large support staff to handle the manual processes, as well as to load new rates into the TMS because shipments are continually not planning because there’s no rate available. All of this hassle comes out of a desire to make shipping less complicated
Use ShipLinx to Bridge the Gaps in Your TMS
Many RateLinx customers have an existing TMS that may not be fully meeting their needs. Rather than outright replacing a costly TMS, ShipLinx TMS can be used to bridge some of the gaps with your current system (and not as your primary TMS). A popular solution is using ShipLinx to automatically send a rejected load out to auction using the Auction Module. A customer can invite their Truckload carriers to the ShipLinx Auction Module, then when a shipment is rejected through their current TMS, ShipLinx can automatically notify the other carriers that there is a load to bid on. This solution has been very valuable to many of our customers when capacity is tight such as during this past hurricane season.
Another popular solution is the integrated data that a company can leverage when they are also using our Intelligent Invoice ManagementSM (IIM) with ShipLinx. The RateLinx solution of IIM and ShipLinx provides an integrated dataset that is cleansed and standardized to provide actionable data and intelligence. This allows companies to diagnose their issues through a clear understanding of what is causing the problem. This leads to an easy to develop solution that can be deployed quickly and confidently.
Combine ShipLinx with Logistics in 3D
ShipLinx can be used with every aspect of our groundbreaking process Logistics in 3D: Diagnose, Develop, Deploy. During the Diagnose stage, the analytics engine is showing the user in real-time the non-optimal shipments and how much it is costing them. In the Develop stage, the rate modeling capabilities of ShipLinx allow for real-world rate analysis during an RFP. This allows you to adhere to your rules and shipping constraints to ensure that the savings numbers are achievable when you deploy the new rates. Then during the Deploy stage, the single rating engine allows for a quick and easy deployment of the new rates and carriers. This allows a customer to be very nimble with their carriers.
ShipLinx Installs Quickly to Make Your TMS More Efficient
The biggest benefit that we’ve seen customers realize with ShipLinx is the reduction in the manual processes which greatly reduces the cost to operate the TMS. ShipLinx automates all of the manual processes, and it shares its rating engine with the rate modeling, so the constant process of loading rates is gone.
The single rating engine allows you to take advantage of new carriers, and new rules much faster. It also allows you to analyze your current shipping patterns with much more accuracy because you can load real routing rules and analyze the data.
Installing ShipLinx is very easy. All we need is the list of a customer’s locations, their carriers, rates, and their routing rules. We can get a customer up and running in about 45-60 days. If the customer is already using IIM, then we already have all the carriers and rates loaded in the single rating engine so ShipLinx can be deployed even faster.
Are you ready to bridge the gaps in your TMS quickly and easily? Please, send me an e-mail and we can take the first steps towards better, smarter logistics management.
