DC Velocity - September 2015

in decision-making—an unforgiveable sin at a time when companies need to be able to respond swiftly to any disruption in the supply chain.

“A customer could say, ‘I’ve already got WMS, TMS, and order management software. Isn’t my supply chain efficient enough?’ And we answer that it may have been efficient enough when all you were doing was pushing inventory to your stores. But with this change to omnichannel, it’s not just about store fulfillment and online fulfillment, but about overall consumer fulfillment,” Brasca said.

Companies increasingly operate in a marketplace where complex global problems affect not just transportation but also omnichannel distribution, retail, and manufacturing operations. To tackle those challenges, software must feature interoperability between transportation and warehousing, both in sharing transactional flows and in merging the two worlds with optimization logic.

A “warehouse-aware” TMS application can help users to eliminate common bottlenecks—for instance, by allowing them to revise dock schedules to better coordinate inbound and outbound traffic, said Brasca.

Another advantage a networked TMS offers over standard transportation management systems is the ability to host a link to mobile computing platforms, giving users more visibility into shipments in transit than is allowed by current technology (such as daily updates generated through electronic data interchange, or EDI). In comparison, a TMS linked to a location-enabled smartphone could use signals from a global positioning system (GPS) receiver to provide real-time updates that give users better connectivity with carriers and let them find quick solutions to capacity constraints.

GOING MOBILE

Adding mobile capabilities to a TMS can do much more than simply allow users to do a better job of tracking deliveries and monitoring schedules. For example, it is easier to track a load if the TMS can accommodate “geofences,” which, when incorporated into software programs, enable users to receive alerts when a truck crosses predefined geographic boundaries as measured by an app on the driver’s smartphone.