Transportation management software solutions prove to be incredibly useful to organizations. From shipment tracking to route planning and optimization to reports and analytics, transportation management software offers a slew of features that bring overall logistics operations in order and also help reduce expenses. The global transportation management software market is expected to reach the US $17.8 billion by 2025. In this guide, we will discuss everything that you need to know about custom transportation management software development.
What is Transportation Management Software?
A transportation management system refers to a tool that is designed to manage transportation logistics. This software, also known as TMS, is a part of supply chain management (SCM) and is dedicated to maintaining interactions and activities that take place between an order management system and a distribution center or a warehouse.
The software for transportation management helps you make sure that suppliers have track of shipments and they are able to keep in communication with the buyers. This software is one of the most preferred tools in the logistics segment.
Transportation management software development is an incredible solution to opt for logistics businesses as they treat overall operations to more scalability as well as flexibility along with various functions available at their fingertips.
Key Features of Transportation Management Software
When you are planning to build a transportation management software, it is imperative that you first create a checklist of all the essential features of TMS to have in your project. We listed below the most important features of transportation management software. Let’s take a look:
Real-Time Tracking
Real-time tracking is one of the core features of transportation management software for all the good reasons. It provides information on both inbound and outbound shipments. Real-time alerts make sure that managers, as well as administrative staff, are notified if and when any important shipment is completed or needs immediate action.
Route Planning
Route planning is also one of the most important features of transportation management software as it helps managers figure out how a shipment should move from one place to another. The route planning feature is a must because it offers help with activities like vehicle schedules, hours of delivery, vehicle availability, driver behavior, and management, traffic, and geographical considerations. Managers can optimize routes and ensure an increased on-time delivery rate and reduced fuel consumption.
Carrier Management
Carrier management is a feature of transportation management software that allows your staff to easily choose service providers on the basis of various factors like geographical coverage, type of service, and price. This feature also allows logistics companies to find and compare different rates as well as carrier fees for the concerned shipment which gives the organization the scope for saving up on transportation.
Reports and Dashboards
When you’re investing in transportation management software development, you’d want to have a feature that allows you to have the data in order. It is essential that your software is able to capture data that is easy to access. The reports and dashboard features make sure your managers can look into historic transportation data. This kind of information is extremely useful in gaining a clear understanding of how well the current management strategies are performing and how to plan better by allowing you to see potential roadblocks and the scope for improvement.
Shipment Planning
A transportation management software solution is incomplete without the function that allows you to manage and keep track of all your shipments. With the shipment planning feature, you can minimize costs by scheduling shipments and maintaining them into the most efficient set based on various factors such as type of transportation, inventory availability, and time frame.
Fleet Management
Apart from shipment planning, fleet management is also a must-have feature to have in your transportation management software. This feature is essential for managing various fleet management practices such as monitoring, maintaining and optimizing vehicles that are being used for transportation.
Read More: How to Start a Profitable Fleet Management Business?
Billing
Since you’re planning to build a transportation management software to simplify your logistics processes and streamline different operations and communications, you must make sure to have the billing feature in it to keep your payment activities in check. With this feature, you can automate several practices such as creating and sharing invoices, sending attachments and notes, and also, customizing invoices for users.
Benefits of Transportation Management Software Development
Transportation management software solutions help companies improve various operations and make it easy for them to drive their business in a more strategic and efficient way. This allows them to ensure improved services for their customers. Let us now take a look at the topmost benefits of transportation management software development that you’ll get to enjoy for your business:
Seamless Tracking
Okay, this one has to be the foremost advantage of developing a transportation management software solution for your business. A TMS software allows you the ability to spot packages in real-time, which means complete transparency throughout the process. Tracking offers information like the total time consumed by a specific route which can turn out to be useful in planning the route in a more efficient way.
Efficiency and Productivity
TMS offers incredible functions like the ability to track delivery, manage inventory, and various other processes which allow businesses to boost their efficiency and productivity. Such functions of transportation management software impact the supply chain and offer the scope for savings to the users. With transportation management software development, you can make sure that your customers are timely notified about the shipping process.
Reduced Costs
One of the biggest advantages of TMS development is reduced costs. The fact that the software comes with analytics and optimization functionality allows you to easily minimize your expenses since you can utilize the data to make more informed decisions.
Warehouse Management
Warehouse management is an integral part of logistics operations and thus, it demands to be up to the mark to avoid any delays or other kinds of bottlenecks. With the TMS solution, you can keep a record of orders and check if they are in the warehouse or in transit.
Reporting
TMS solutions are becoming more comprehensive with the implementation of customized reporting functionalities. The software provides managers and the staff with useful reports that can be leveraged into making better decisions and improving customer service.
Improved Customer Service
With transportation software development, you can work on improving customer service as the tools have functions that help you track shipments and check the distance from the destination. Using this software, you can make sure that your clients are up-to-date about the shipment status and are able to access the tracking whenever they want.
How to Build Transportation Management Software?
Research and Plan
The very step to a software development project is performing thorough research, validating your idea, and creating a detailed plan. Before you jump to the TMS development stage, it is vital to do your research. This stage also involves performing a self-assessment step, reviewing all the processes in your business, detecting and understanding challenges, and coming up with the list of important features you will be implemented in the software.
Determine Potential Challenges
While you’ve carried out a plan to develop your transportation management software in the first step, it is essential to determine and be aware of the challenges that may cross your path in the development journey. Processes surrounding the supply chain systems which are currently scattered over a number of segments can be optimized with a well-planned centralization using a TMS platform. In order to accomplish this, your software must be capable enough of finding the best route for shipping.
Moreover, the software should be able to plan routes based on factors like weather conditions which thus helps optimize fuel consumption, and save time and costs.
You must also focus on the algorithm your software may have. It should also work as a tool that helps you manually place or accept offers and edit routes if/ when any changes occur.
Select the Features for TMS software
When your goal is to build a good transportation management software, you should make sure that it has an extensive range of core features and is capable of performing data processing. Apart from including core features like tracking, route planning, and carrier management, it is important that the software has capabilities that involve providing reports and analytics. When deciding on the selection of features to go with, it is best to consult your transportation management software development team to gain a better understanding.
Partner with a Transportation Management Software Development Company
In order to ensure the success of your transportation software development, you will need to have a trusted and experienced development partner who can help you transform your goal into a perfect solution. You must find a team of qualified transportation management software developers with expertise in the field.
Development
Once you are through with the above-mentioned steps, you will be ready to move on to the next step of the development. It is important to determine the tech stack your software is going to utilize in the process. So, you must create a technology stack in order to finally gear up the development stage.
Conclusion
Today, companies worldwide are using TMS systems to keep up with the customer’s demands and stay up-to-date by automating logistics operations. With more and more companies implementing this solution, the future of transportation management software looks expensive.
In this guide, you read how using a transportation management system treats organizations to benefits like cost savings, increased efficiency, and improved customer satisfaction. By building a custom TMS solution, you will have a tool tailored to your business needs.
You must keep in mind to bring in the core as well as advanced features in your transportation management software. Features like real-time tracking, route planning, and optimization, shipment planning, fleet management, reporting and analytics, and billing are the most important features to include in your TMS solution.
Whether you are planning to partner with a transportation software development company for building your TMS system or you want to update/ implement new functions into your existing solution, Matellio will provide you with everything your project needs. With years of experience in the market, our team of engineers has expertise in building inventive solutions that pave the way for the best of your business.
To discuss the plan, get in touch with us!
