As oil prices continue to rise which continues to influence the rest of the economy in terms of inflation and rising prices for every commodity and now food prices. It is seen in transportation based industries such as mass transit, air travel, cruise prices, taxi fares, bus and train fares which have a direct impact on the supply chain and impact as on you as consumer.
The oil prices are adding costs into the supply chain by adding to transportation costs. As fertilizer prices increase which impacts the farmer, growing costs are higher, which means higher prices selling prices, more expensive transportation costs and all the way down the chain.
As companies look to maximize their investments and leverage existing assets they are looking for ways lower operating costs. By lowering their operating costs for the companies that have fleets can significantly add bottom line results to the balance sheet. An easy way to add value to their company and lower costs is to examine their fleet operations (train, planes, trucks, automobile) operating costs. New TMS options now available in the cloud as SaaS options significantly lowers the costs to leverage this technology which was very costly just a few years ago. TMS has gained such popularities there are now more TMS available as SaaS and cloud models than WMS now.
Recently many new vendors have entered the SaaS and cloud space offering transportation based services. They now extend to other transportation based services as well that encourages supplier collaboration which can be coupled with eprocurement to further reduce the supply chain impact and lower overall operating costs. Many traditional transportation companies that were primarily parcel delivery have started to offer their own brand of TMS now delivered as a cloud service. This increased competition has lowered the point of entry on TMS systems, once a heavy technology investment. The traditional TMS vendors have started to goto cloud as well which increases technology options and allows a greater supply chain execution strategy for all. These vendors have a wider range of supply chain applications that may tie in demand and replenishment planning, warehouse management, transportation management, supplier relationship management and global trade management are offered to round out functionality.
To investigate ways to track your vehicles via GPS, track mileage, driver hours, trailer counts, capacity constraints, load optimization, asset maintenance, route efficiency, dock scheduling, consolidation and deconsolidation options, truck categorization for load types (52ft trailer, reefer trucks etc.) gas consumption are main features that contribute the necessary business intelligence to not only manage your fleet but maximizes efficiencies throughout the organization. The added benefits of tying this in with payroll for driver times, and procurement for equipment and accounting for depreciation of assets can make your company more efficient just by adding a TMS based system. Seeing that transportation is a significant cost in the final selling price of a product by reducing the transportation component may lower the overall costs on just about everything.
Eval-Source is an Analyst/Consulting consulting firm that offers enterprise software evaluation, cloud computing consulting, business process optimization and technology planning for organizations. Our innovative professional services combine to make your life easier whether it is to acquire enterprise software or provide you with fact – based information to match your business with IT and to add critical decision support to your technology investments using the Tru-Eval system. Follow our blog at www.eval-source.com/blog or on twitter @eval_source or our site
