I recently conducted a brief poll on LinkedIn to try to get a sense of what folks that have made investment in TMS (either upgrades or net new) are doing with data collected.
In our experience the spectrum of what shippers do with the new power of data ranges from simply storing it to proactively searching for continuous improvement. Leaders are mining the data and strive to uncover opportunities to improve operations and service, reduce cost, and realize increased value.
I was pleased to see that three-quarters of respondents are at least using system outputs to drive process change. Presumably these folks are tracking KPIs and trends and are taking action upon them.
Nearly 40% of respondents are mining the data to uncover untapped opportunities in the transportation and distribution network; lane mode/carrier changes, pool points/cross docks, zone skip, aggregations, multi-stops, terms conversions, the list goes on.
The takeaway here is that there is so much power in the data that to ignore it is like not using all the safety features in your new automobile.
We at JBF have written and talked about TMS post-implementation stewardship for some time now (see below).
Stewardship means taking ownership of the investment you have made and ensuring that solution quality decay does not occur.
In our experience, clients that do not take active ownership after Go-Live will see the quality of their investment deteriorate over time due to lack of data management discipline, adherence to procedure, oversight of the full capabilities of the technology, or just plain old ‘attention has been turned elsewhere’.
