clean the truck, so there are limited optimization opportu-
nities,” he explains. “In the business case, you have to under-
stand the optimization buckets and how big they are, and
not base your case on, say, an average 8 percent savings.”
Mike Hood, director of implementation and professional
services for Transite Technology, a TMS developer, stresses
the importance of good communication with the vendor.
“[The software developer] needs to have a list of what you
are trying to accomplish,” he says. Hood also warns that it
can be easy to get tripped up by terminology. “I’ve heard
customers talk about a bill of lading when they were really
talking about an order,” he says.
2Match the provider to the need. Once the business case is nailed down, it’s time to move on to vendor selection—a process that requires great care. Hood urges customers to observe the TMS in action either through demos
or at other customer sites. “Make sure you see it,” he says.
He also recommends including operations personnel in
the planning and decision-making process. Those are the
people who have to put a TMS to work. But too often, he
says, they are not included until after the decision is made.
Hood says that customers should meet with the vendor in
what he calls business design sessions that lay out precisely
what the system will provide—and help to avoid “scope
creep,” a reference to changes and additions made after the
business case has been developed and approved.
3Manage the change. The implementation itself demands executive support and sufficient training. “A
few things are just obvious,” says Joel Hagle, vice president
of IT solutions design for Transplace, a firm that provides
logistics technology and transportation management serv-
ices. “You need good project management. You need to
operate to a plan. You need to have a test plan that is com-
prehensive enough. You need to test each process individu-
ally. That testing is important.”
Banker stresses the necessity of sufficient training. “You
need to set aside time for lots of training,” he says. Hood
adds that training should take place as close to the go-live
date as possible. “You don’t want to train people a month
ahead. They’ll forget what they learned,” he says.
Attention to change management is all the more impor-
tant in cases where the organization is undergoing some
restructuring at the time of the TMS installation—general-
ly, a shift from decentralized to centralized transportation
management. With a TMS, the biggest savings opportuni-
ties come in a centralized operation, Banker explains. “You
are not going to get the same payback if you have, say, 10
factories and you still have transportation planners opti-
mizing orders for each factory. When you are planning for
all the factories, you can make yourself more interesting to
carriers, and you can get price breaks and more optimiza-
tion opportunities.”
Although centralization will result in better payback, it’s
also likely to create some short-term disruption, Banker
says. “You have to say to your planners, ‘We’re going to do
it here. Are you willing to move?’ You might not need as
many. And people who have been doing it by phone might
not have the right skills to go from a manual operation to
a TMS.”
In any event, Hagle says preparing employees for the
change is critical. “The customer needs to get in front of
that early on. You want to talk to the people on the dock. If
no one talks to them first, they are going to get scared.” And,
no doubt, a major implementation will affect some jobs.
“Some of that has to happen,” he says. “Change manage-
ment is difficult.”
The change process must also include those in the busi-
ness affected by transportation decisions even if they are
not directly involved—such as sales and marketing or cus-
tomer service.
4Take it one step at a time. Hood urges establishing a go-live target date early in the implementation process
and sticking to it. But that’s not to say the switchover nec-
essarily has to be completed in a single, go-for-broke push.
Hagle says most customers do not do a “big bang” switch to
a new system. “You might go live with one or two or three
vendors. You roll it out in chunks, and each chunk has a
cutover plan.”
Hood says that if the customer is switching from an exist-
ing TMS, it often makes sense for the new and old systems
to run in parallel for a few weeks.
What it comes down to, then, is careful planning, selection of a system that meets well-defined requirements,
appropriate training and preparation, and a measured roll-out. But what might be most important is to ensure that
everyone affected by the system—from executive management through sales and marketing, to transportation planners, to those on the dock—is on board and committed to
making it all work. ●
