6/19/23, 10:49 AM LinkedIn

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Is TMS a Polysemic Acronym?

What should TMS mean to
you in your role?

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As a logistician who spends his time with a lot of

people who manage the movement of goods (Well,
whether to call it Shipment, Consignment, Cargo or
Freight is a battle for another day), I have oft heard
them say that they manage this movement on a TMS
- What they decipher as Transport Management
System. There are many interpretations of what a
TMS is, and hence I believe that TMS is either a
misnomer or a Polysemic Acronym.

For a Logistics Service User (LSU), a TMS

implementation is a large project which has to
work across silos and spend a lot of money, time
effort to implement. When implemented, it gives
them the Transport Control Tower and the utility is
either from the ERP vendor or integrated with the
ERP. Most often, transaction (Consignment)
tracking is the operational intervention and mostly
ends with pushing data to Freight Audit
companies for Freight Invoicing audit. Freight
Tendering, Vendor Discovery, Price Discovery are

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not part of this TMS (most often) as the vendor

nominations are through annual contracting.

For a Logistics Service Provider (LSP) who

provides "Land Transportation" (Often referred to
as Transporter), a TMS is something like his ERP.
He can recognise Revenue (LR or Docket as you
want to call by sophistication) and capture Cost
(Manifest, Trip Sheet, Truck hire Challan, Run
Sheets etc). Mostly, the TMS available in the
market comes with an integrated accounting
package that helps the transporter close his
yearly accounts and also help him filing returns.
The transporter version of the TMS helps him to
manage Hub and Spoke Transportation of
Express or Parcel and Point to Point FTL
transportation. There are many good and
established TMS vendors in India.

For a Logistics Service Provider (LSP) who

provides Transportation services through the
modes of Air and Sea (Often referred to as
Freight Forwarder) the TMS which helps him to
manage his business is called a Freight
Management System (FMS). It helps him to
recognise Revenue (Create House, Tag a Master
etc...) and capture Cost (Book Air/Ocean Freight,
Capture Origin/Destination Cost from Agents &
Own Offices). First Mile (Supplier to Port) and
Last Mile (Port to Buyer) land transportation is
captured as reimbursement to the transporter in
the FMS. There are established global and Indian
products in TMS for Freight Forwarders (FMS).

For a Logistics Service Provider (LSP) who

provides Warehousing based Distribution
Services - often referred to as a 3PL (why only
this entity is 3PL and others are not is lost in
translation in the industry), the TMS is just an
add-on utility to his business. Mostly, these
entities practise "Reimbursement Transportation"
on behalf of their principals. They provide FTL &
PTL services as an outsourced activity with
operations of both modes being the responsibility
of the outsourced Transporters. Peer pressure in
the industry also leads them to buy a market TMS
solution. Then they have rebellion in the Data
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Entry ranks in the warehouse. Lots of

workarounds, Some of the core transport
processes to be bypassed and eventually the
TMS vendor and the 3PL pitch trenches and get
on to a long drawn battle - but cannot live without
each other. Some 3PLs eventually read the
Square Peg in a Round Hole testament - mostly
to make the mistake of developing "Mini TMS"
which is a feast for the friendly-neighbourhood-
Sofware-company.

Established TMS (all flavours) players are also

adapting by creating feature controlled versions and
ensuring that there is no pushback from the Data
Entry brigade which controls the Make or Break of the
TMS implementation in enterprises. All these
solutions are again Silos. Then there are other TMS
operators like the Vendor and Price Discovery
Platforms (Freight Exchanges, Bidding Platforms),
TMS Tracking Services (GPS, GSM tracking, Routes,
ePOD etc).

Imagine if a large manufacturing and distribution

enterprise in India wants a 50,000 feet view of their
Transportation (All Modes) execution with the power
to drill down to the single transaction at ground zero?
Any guess how many TMS solutions and networks
will be involved in getting data with no latency? Let us
look forward to the intelligent minds in the industry to
create solutions that will seamlessly integrate,
operate, track and provide all this on Cognitive
Dashboards for decision support for all modes and
models.

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