Is Your TMS Ready to Adapt, Extend and Scale with Your Company?
The days when transportation management systems (TMS) were primarily on-premises, monolithic and nonpliable are long gone. Today’s systems are cloud-based, automated and ready to tackle the transportation management challenges that modern supply chains are throwing at them. This means any company with TMS software that was put in place 10+ years ago is probably missing out on some key functionalities and automation that newer, cloud-based systems offer.
Older systems and even some newer solutions also lack modularity, or those interchangeable components that support easy customization and expansion. Revenova TMS, for example, is highly adaptable and extendable due to its modular architecture. Put simply, it allows you to add or remove modules as your company quickly adapts to changing market conditions, new internal requirements or an evolving transportation market.
Modularity is important because companies’ software needs change as those organizations grow and evolve. It’s a natural “future-proofing” mechanism, if you will, that provides flexibility to scale up or down seamlessly. The system remains efficient, relevant and cost-effective, and your company always has the exact TMS functionalities that it needs at the moment—nothing more and nothing less.
Dave Romanchuk, Director of Product Management at Revenova, says modular software also helps companies “do less with more” in an unpredictable business environment. Companies across the board are looking for new ways to gain efficiencies, and a TMS provides the core “blocking and tackling” platform they need to be able to manage transportation spend—a fairly significant expense category for most organizations.
Performance and Efficiency Gains
Modular TMS software is different than other systems because it allows users to activate certain features, each of which can lead to marginal gains in both performance and efficiency. Take pricing tools, for example. The current economic climate has been challenging for lower-margin operations, which have to watch their bottom lines very carefully. Using Revenova’s Lane IQ pricing tool, companies can track network market price fluctuations over time by specific mode.
“This is a service that can be added to the TMS at any time,” says Romanchuk. “This is yet one more powerful aspect of a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution, where you’re not locked into a 3-year contract on a software solution that takes months to upgrade or modify.” Instead, the changes can be made quickly and you can be up and running on new modules that help save money and improve transportation network efficiencies. Unfortunately, these benefits aren’t accessible to companies that stick with monolithic, legacy TMS platforms that are difficult to modify.
To sweeten the deal even further, Revenova operates in “continuous improvement” mode behind the scenes. For example, the TMS is built on Salesforce, which releases four new application programming interface (API) upgrades annually. Revenova offers a similar setup, with its four upgrades being deployed “with very minimal impact as they are released,” Romanchuk says.
Thanks to its modular nature, the TMS also supports up to 10 prior releases, which means even companies that are using an older version can leverage the product’s “feature flag” to turn new modules on and off as the upgrade happens. “At that point, you’re fully upgraded on the latest release and gain access to hundreds of new features that can be activated individually,” says Romanchuk. “It’s a tactical approach to exposing our customers to more functionality and features of the TMS that just haven’t been activated yet.”
Fast Gear-Switching
Once in a place, a modular TMS begins to produce benefits pretty quickly. “The speed at which you can implement change is the top benefit,” Romanchuk says. Revenova has more than 45 integration partners (and is always adding new ones) whose applications can be “turned on” in the TMS in less than 24 hours. The same process works in reverse for companies that decide they no longer need certain functions.
Modular TMS systems provide a valuable solution for companies seeking flexibility, scalability and cost-effectiveness in their software. By adopting a modular approach, organizations can adapt to changing market conditions, reduce development time and improve overall business agility.
Activations and deactivations take place within a day or less, so companies can easily adapt and flex right along with current transportation market trends,” Romanchuk says. “You basically get scalability without the added overhead.”
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