Should we buy a packaged TMS instead of building one?
Often yes, and we will say so. If your requirements are standard road freight in one region with mainstream carriers, a packaged product will be cheaper and faster than anything custom. Building makes sense when your rating rules, service model, or client specific requirements do not fit a package, when you are a 3PL whose differentiation is the process itself, or when you already own a package and need the integration and audit layer around it. We are happy to be the second opinion on that decision.
How much can a TMS reduce our freight spend?
We will not give you a percentage. Any vendor quoting one has invented it, because the answer depends on your current process, your rate quality, your network, and your consolidation opportunity. What we can say is where savings typically come from: recovering invoice overcharges through audit, consolidating loads that are currently shipped separately, and shifting volume to better performing carriers. We can estimate the first of those from your own historical invoices during discovery, using your numbers rather than ours.
Have you built a TMS before?
We have not delivered a full transportation management system, and we would rather tell you that than imply otherwise. We have delivered a web based logistics management system with third party integrations and real time shipment tracking for an automotive parts supplier, and a supply chain management system covering inventory, demand forecasting and logistics for a supermarket chain. Both clients are published with verifiable reviews. The transferable work is the integration, tracking and reconciliation, and the TMS specific planning depth would be new build for us.
Can you integrate with our existing carriers?
In almost all cases yes, but the effort varies enormously and we will not pretend otherwise. A carrier with a documented REST API might take days. One with EDI over an older transport takes longer. One with only a portal login means either screen level automation, which is fragile and we will flag it as such, or a negotiated file exchange. During discovery we classify every carrier so the estimate reflects the awkward ones rather than averaging them away.
How does the system handle a carrier invoice we disagree with?
It recalculates what the charge should be from the rate table in force on the shipment date and the actual movement, then shows the variance with its components, so you can see whether the difference is a reweigh, an accessorial, a fuel surcharge change, or an error. From there the invoice can be approved, part approved, or disputed, with the reason recorded. The point is not automatic rejection. It is that the conversation with the carrier starts from a defensible number.
Do you support route optimisation?
Yes, with an honest framing. We optimise stop sequencing and load assignment against constraints such as time windows, capacity, driver hours and site restrictions, within a time budget, and we show the planner why a route was proposed. We do not claim to produce the mathematically optimal route for a large network, because that is not computable in the time available and claiming it would be dishonest. For most operations a good explainable answer that a planner trusts beats a better answer they override.
Can the TMS work with our ERP rather than replacing it?
That is the normal arrangement. The ERP keeps orders, customers and finance. The TMS takes shipment requests, plans and executes movement, and returns cost and status. The important decision is which system owns which record, and we settle that explicitly at the start, because ambiguity there produces duplicated customer data and two conflicting sets of freight cost. We integrate with mainstream ERPs and with in house systems through APIs or file exchange.
How do you handle multiple clients with different rates, as a 3PL?
Multi tenancy has to be designed in from the beginning rather than retrofitted. Each client gets its own rate tables, service rules, document templates and reporting, with data separation enforced in the data model and in access control rather than by convention in the interface. Retrofitting this into a single tenant system is one of the more expensive rebuilds in logistics software, so if you are a 3PL we treat it as a foundation requirement.
What does the timeline look like?
We will not quote a duration before seeing your rate complexity and your integration list, because those two factors dominate everything else. What we can commit to is sequence and visibility: rating and audit proven against your historical data first, then planning and execution, then visibility, with a working system you can inspect at each stage rather than a single delivery at the end. You will get a duration when the integration survey is done and it will be based on the awkward carriers, not the easy ones.
Is this the same as your warehouse management page?
No, and the boundary matters. A TMS decides how goods move between sites: carrier, rate, route, and freight cost. A warehouse management system runs what happens inside four walls: bin locations, put away, pick paths, and labour. They meet at packed weights, dimensions and dock sequencing, and we integrate them at that handover. If your problem is inside the building, our warehouse management system page is the right one.
Who owns the code and the data?
You do. Source code, infrastructure configuration, documentation and data are yours, held in your repositories and your cloud accounts where you prefer that, and we hand over with the intention that another team could maintain it. We do not build in a dependency on us as a commercial tactic, and we do not treat your shipment data as an asset of ours.
