Reduce your transport budget thanks to TMS
Reduce your transport budget thanks to TMS
Commercial companies, whatever their size, face constantly changing costs of transporting goods. Sea freight, air freight and road transport are directly subject to geopolitical events and the period we are living in does not fail to shake up the sector. Thus, when the price of fuels increases suddenly, the transport budget can also explode. However, this item of expenditure is rarely controlled as it should be, mainly due to the choice of the best tool. Let's see how a TMS (Transport Management System) can significantly reduce the transport budget while optimizing the organization.
A transport budget to follow closely
Depending on the company and the period, the transport budget can vary between 3 and 10% of the total expenditure. This remains, in any case, an expense column that is too high for many of them. Added to this are the difficulties of invoicing lines to be checked and the time that transport department employees are sorely lacking to find faults and remedy them.
However, cost control, or more precisely the visibility of these in the field of transport, is part of a search for competitiveness. This therefore represents an essential issue that can be achieved with the right tools leading to areas for improvement.
What are the possible levers to limit transport costs?
- Limit the kilometers traveled
- Optimize resources
- Improve the filling rate of trucks
- Combine shipments
- Control and optimize waiting times
- Consolidate flows
- Better buying and sourcing
- Better choice of service providers
- Reduce disputes
- Control of additional and negotiated costs
- Etc.
Added to this is the management of payroll and time spent on time-consuming tasks such as data entry, sending emails, document management.
What is a TMS and why is it interesting to reduce costs?
A Transport Management System (TMS) is software for managing all of your transport operations. Previously used only by logistics companies and the transport companies themselves, it has shown its effectiveness upstream in recent years: in other words, among shippers.
A TMS makes it possible to manage the transport of its goods from A to Z, from the creation of deliveries to reporting, through the optimization of rounds or the carbon footprint. It is also a comprehensive cost control tool that allows:
- Automation and optimization of operations
- Cost and invoice control
- Loading simulation for better buying
Automate and optimize your transport operations with a TMS
Automation is often the key to lowering costs. And this is true in the field of transport when it becomes possible, in particular, to reduce the number of loads to be organised. To do this, the TMS adapts the load factor and the number of kilometers based on your order book, i.e. as many transports saved. It is even possible to visualize in 3D a simulation of the loads to reduce the empty space which represents as much a financial cost as an ecological one.
Take advantage of a cost and invoice control system
The TMS is also an excellent internal auditor of your transport invoices. Once again, this device is made possible by an automatic control of these, including errors and discrepancies, even for complex modes of transport.
In general, this tool dedicated to transport management allows you to control your expenses by following all the payment stages from pre-invoicing to logistics flows.
Simulate your transport purchases to better control them
By equipping your organization with a TMS, you can carry out a budget simulation upstream of your transport decisions. This integrates all your criteria and levels of service (volume, price, CO², etc.) and allows you to compare calls for tenders and thus better choose your service providers.
In this way, you secure your operations according to the different hypotheses which can be based in particular on your history. A TMS also gives you the possibility of carrying out multidimensional analyses, all this, on an intuitive and complete dashboard which generates your reports.
The integration of a TMS such as MyTower TMS has an immediate and quantifiable impact on the transport budget with a possible reduction of 20%. The implementation of a TMS makes it possible to control expenses by automatic control and to reduce costs thanks to modules for budget simulations, load optimization and route management. In short, a TMS brings a visible and immediate ROI and really reduces your transport expenses.