How to Encourage TMS Adoption Within Your Organization

Adopting a Transportation Management System (TMS) is necessary to remain competitive and for successful freight logistics management. A TMS helps you:

• Optimize and automate logistics operations.

• Streamline your freight transportation processes.

• Manage and visualize your supply chain.

Understanding TMS and Its Benefits

What is a TMS?

A TMS is a software platform designed to manage logistics and transportation aspects of supply chain operations.

It enables you to automate operations, coordinate with carriers, and efficiently manage routes, shipments, and costs.

A highly specialized TMS provider can tailor their solutions to what you need—From processing RFPs (requests for proposals) to optimizing lane management and integrating with carriers.

Key Benefits of TMS

Implementing a TMS offers several advantages, including:

• Improved efficiency: By automating manual processes and optimizing shipment planning, a TMS helps you reduce the time and effort spent on logistics coordination.

• Cost savings: The ability to analyze multiple bids and carrier options ensures you can choose the most cost-effective solutions.

• Enhanced visibility: Real-time tracking and data insights give you a clear view of shipment progress and allow you to make informed decisions quickly.

Identifying Resistance to Adoption

Several barriers can slow down or prevent adoption within your organization, even with a powerful TMS.

Addressing these challenges head-on is critical to ensuring smooth adoption, reducing freight costs, and more.

Common TMS Challenges:

• Coordination complexity: Managing multiple suppliers, carriers, and warehouses without a streamlined system can overwhelm your team, making the transition to a new platform daunting.

• Employee resistance: The fear of new technology and concern about job disruption can lead to resistance from teams unfamiliar with TMS functionalities.

• Integration issues: Complex systems can be challenging to integrate with existing platforms or processes, causing hesitation among teams and management.

Assessing Employee Sentiment

One of the key strategies to encourage TMS adoption is understanding employee sentiment. How can you do this?

Conducting surveys or gathering direct feedback can highlight concerns and identify areas where additional support or training is needed.

By taking a proactive approach and listening to employees, you can tailor your adoption strategy to address their worries, ultimately leading to greater buy-in.

Developing a Strategic Implementation Plan

1. Engaging Stakeholders

Engaging stakeholders or other team members early is essential for successfully choosing a TMS and implementing it.

Communicate the TMS benefits to key decision-makers and address pain points, such as the complexity of managing freight RFPs and multiple bids. Why?

We know that running freight RFPs in logistics is a complex task. You have to juggle finding suitable carriers and sorting through multiple bids, all while keeping an eye on cost, service quality, and deadlines. It’s a lot to manage, but getting it right is essential for smooth operations.

With Planimatik’s features, like the Smart Selection of Top Offers, you can simplify decision-making and optimize procurement.

• This tool filters the best bids quickly, ensuring cost-efficient and quality carrier selection.

• The Stats Feature allows you to gain greater visibility and monitor cost, service quality, and deadlines.

2. Training and Support

Comprehensive training is essential to equipping employees with the knowledge they need to use a TMS confidently. Here are more valuable tactics:

• Planimatik’s Lanes Import feature, which is available through the RFP module, makes it easier to organize lane data and streamline logistics planning.

• A straightforward, hands-on training program that demonstrates the simplicity of features like Calendar View, which offers step-by-step visualization, can ease the learning curve and ensure early adoption.

3. User Training and Adoption

Proper user training and adoption strategies are crucial for maximizing TMS benefits. An excellent rule of thumb is to look for a TMS that provides:

• User-friendly interface and tutorials.

• Comprehensive onboarding and regular training resources.

• Ongoing support and troubleshooting capabilities.

• Minimizes the learning curve and allows for immediate results.

Promoting Continuous Improvement

Monitoring Use and Performance

Once the TMS is implemented, regularly monitoring its performance is critical to ensure it meets your organization’s goals.

Evaluate critical metrics like transportation costs, on-time delivery rates, and carrier performance to track the system's effectiveness.

Encouraging Feedback Loop

Creating a culture where feedback is valued is essential to adjust and enhance your TMS processes.

Encourage your teammates to share their experiences with the TMS, highlighting any challenges or opportunities for improvement.

This feedback can enhance the user experience, ensuring the system evolves to meet organizational needs and market demands.

Simplify TMS Adoption with Planimatik Tailored Solutions

As we have learned, adopting a TMS can dramatically enhance your organization’s logistics efficiency, reduce costs, and improve visibility across your supply chain.

At Planimatik, we help you overcome common TMS adoption barriers. We offer tailored freight management software solutions.

Simplify logistics management with our key features:

• Smart selection of top offers: Streamline the complex response process to RFPs with data-driven insights. Our tool helps you identify the best proposals by aligning offers with your requirements. It simplifies procurement, enhances efficiency, and ensures well-informed decision-making.

• Lanes Import: Simplify logistics planning by effortlessly importing and managing multiple lanes in your RFP process. Our feature eliminates the manual burden of lane data entry, improving organization and efficiency in planning shipments.

• Calendar View: Transform your logistics planning with our intuitive visualization tool. It provides a step-by-step operational checklist, allowing for easy filtering and organization of shipments. It enhances clarity and efficiency by offering a clear overview of logistics schedules.

We help your team make smarter, faster decisions. Get your free demo today to experience the benefits first-hand.

See our case study to learn how one of our clients achieved 6% cost-savings with Planimatik: the planning first TMS.

Case Study: Reduce costs with Planimatik's solutions