Single Pane or Stained Glass Window: What Does Your Transportation Visibility Look Like?
Most transportation operations are made up of many different pieces, each representing a different aspect of the supply chain. Getting a clear, comprehensive view of all of these moving parts isn’t always easy, and it can be especially difficult if you’re looking through a stained glass window and trying to knit together a cohesive view of everything that’s happening at any given time.
When that fragmented window becomes a single pane of glass, however, the haze clears and a 360-degree view comes into focus. The siloed data, disparate systems and other obstructions disappear. In their place is a complete, comprehensive view of your transportation network, where shipment tracking happens in real-time, various modes can be monitored at once, and carrier performance is easy to track.
Companies that once relied on disparate, disconnected systems to run their supply chains are shifting gears and striving for the “single pane of glass” approach, where activity and key performance indicators (KPIs) extend across functional areas to create one reliable, holistic view of their operations. Even organizations that haven’t made the shift yet recognize that it’s the future, and Revenova has fully embraced this reality by offering a highly modular, adaptable transportation management system (TMS) that incorporates multiple different “panes of glass,” if you will.
“The single pane of glass idea is basically why we started Revenova 10 years ago,” says CEO Charles Craigmile, who previously worked for a large, national logistics company that relied on multiple different technology systems to run its network and serve its customers. “I was repeatedly frustrated by the number of systems we had to use during the cradle-to-grave process of quote-to-cash. Our sales reps and carrier operations employees were using different systems, which forced us to constantly key and re-key information into different applications.”
Not only was the manual work time-consuming and onerous, but in the end, no one ever had a single version of the truth to work from. As more end customers, transportation modes, and carriers were added to the network, the more obscure the “pane of glass” became. This presented significant problems—both short and long term—for the growing logistics provider.
Eager to help other companies address their disjointed tech stack issues, Craigmile, along with co-founders Dave Craigmile and Mike Horvath, came up with a plan to build a multimodal TMS with a single user interface (UI) rooted in the Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) platform. Having one version of the truth to rely on would give sales, carrier operations, finance/accounting, and other stakeholders the chance to work from the same data, leverage the same set of tools, and have the same user experience across the board.
Once in place, the multimodal TMS would provide a complete experience that could accommodate multiple different devices, currencies, and language right out of the box. The platform leverages many of Salesforce’s advanced capabilities but is fine-tuned specifically for the logistics and transportation sectors. This is something that had never been done before and to this day still doesn’t exist outside of Revenova TMS.
“Even today, most of our competitors have legacy products that were largely built as dispatch systems. They weren’t 360-degree, holistic systems that cover all carriers and customers,” Charles Craigmile explains. “Because we started fresh on Salesforce a decade ago, we have no legacy, on-premise technology left dragging around behind us.”
Getting Everyone Working from the Same Playbook
When your whole enterprise is working from a single source of truth for transportation and logistics information, data silos and inconsistencies quickly become a thing of the past. Team members can access accurate and up-to-date information, make better decisions and collaborate more effectively—all without the need for spreadsheets, emails and phone calls.
By streamlining data processes and reducing manual tasks, the highly-modular Revenova TMS also helps companies improve operational efficiency, save money and provide higher levels of service to their own customers. “The single pane of glass is important because it’s all about informed decisions on demand, in real-time, and across all departments,” Craigmile says.
“That promotes collaboration, better margin-related decisions and improved customer service levels,” he continues. “And your associates will love it because instead of spending all their time manually shuttling information across disparate systems, they can make decisions based on real-time data and spend the rest of their time innovating.”
Don’t Integrate, Innovate
Everyone knows that there’s a cost associated with maintaining and licensing on-premises software solutions, but even integrated systems can be pricey to maintain over time. To avoid this problem, Craigmile advises organizations to focus on innovation over integration.
“Don’t spend all your time maintaining an aging IT infrastructure,” he recommends. “Instead, lease the latest and greatest tools and then let your vendor deliver the updates regularly via the cloud.” This beats having to maintain a depreciating asset and it gives your company a system that features all of the latest bells-and-whistles—something that an aging, on-premises solution can’t promise.
“For any logistics operation that doesn’t want to maintain a staff of 100+ people, the SaaS revolution provides a way to enjoy the benefits of not owning assets and in-house people to support it,” says Craigmile. “At Revenova, we’re happy to spend all our time on innovation while letting you focus on what you do best: running your company with a 360-view of exactly what’s going on at any point in time in your transportation and logistics operations.”
To learn more about Revenova TMS, Request a Demo. Follow Revenova on LinkedIn, YouTube, and X for the latest updates and news about Revenova TMS, the original CRM-powered Transportation Management System.
