Efficient and timely delivery of shipments is the primary concern for the trucking companies and freight brokers. Instant gratification has penetrated in today’s consumers’ psyche. Whatever the customers want, they want it either to be in stock or now. If you are the company engaged in retail, manufacturing, distribution, third-party logistics, or e-commerce, and especially, if you are a freight broker, trucking company or a freight broker agent, a timely, secure and cost-effective transportation management is something that makes you stand out in the market.
Due to the increasing penetration of advance technology into logistics and transportation industry worldwide, we have been watching the growing trend of same-day delivery. Do you know that by 2020, the “same-day” delivery is expected to account for up to 50% hike in the logistics costs as a percentage of revenue? Trucking companies and freight brokers are increasingly looking for and exploiting every possible opportunity to control the increasing shipping costs without compromising quality and by streamlining their transportation management.
How Can The Trucking & Freight Management System be Streamlined?
A smartly developed Transportation Management Software, embedded with unique and customizable features, is a great tool for successfully managing the complicated and time-sensitive functions of logistics and distribution. The real-time vehicle tracking and monitoring system, reports generation, trucking compliance, freight mapping solutions and simple to use, intuitive user-interface are some of the key features a successful TMS software offers.
The TMS (Transportation Management Software) plans, executes and monitors the physical movement of products, goods, commodities and materials of various kinds. The Transportation Management Software brings freight mapping solutions that are most often used along with a Warehouse Management System or a business’s ERP system. Though the TMS software’s capabilities differ from vendor to vendor, the most common features and functions that must be included are dispatching, asset management, trucking management, freight brokerage, route management and integrated accounting.
The Benefits of TMS Software
When assessing the transportation management software, users often take into an account its ability to efficiently and effectively manage the key logistics and transportation functions including intermodal and LTL shipping, outbound and in-bound operations, local and overseas transportation and third-party trucking resources. The major and crucial operational functions, when automated via TMS software, offer significant benefits to your logistics and transportation functions. One of the most important benefits is the radical improvement in your customer service levels. Your supply chain operators and transportation analysts can gather performance data from TMS software and make modifications accordingly to address ineffective internal logistics processes, solve transportation partners’ problems and minimize customers’ complaints. Data accuracy is also improved to a great extent.
When integrated with WMS or ERP software, the Transportation Management Software also helps minimize data entry error. This is especially helpful for the trucking companies, freight management businesses and freight brokers as they are faced with tons of diverse data every day. The TMS adjusts and optimizes the distribution methods as per continuously changing customers’ needs. It also simplifies the process to manage these distribution methods.
With TMS software, you can also reduce significant cost involved in storing excessive inventory, as it helps your business to use JIT fulfillment strategies, having just as much inventory as is needed. The savings availed here can be passed onto your customers, which differentiates your services. Use these savings into re-investment of your operations. Though TMS’s freight mapping solutions and ability to ensure trucking compliance, you can also reduce the expedite costs of your business. Lastly, installing and using a TMS software improves the load consolidation capabilities. With a superior monitoring of the outbound shipments, your business can effectively stage and load the vehicles with little or zero wasted space.
Ascend TMS – Bringing Professional Logistics Management at Your Fingertips
Most of the transportation management software or freight mapping solutions are either very costly or have low trucking compliance, many of which are embedded with complex user-interface that requires months of training.
We have found a completely different and smartly developed TMS software; Ascend TMS, which is a complete logistics solution. It serves as your full time transportation and logistics partner, and is available in free-version. We have chosen this software as our recommendation, after critical analysis of the available TMSs in the market and because it has been ranked as No.1 by Crowd Reviews, Software Advice and Capterra.
About Ascend TMS – What is it & Why is it Different?
Ascend TMS is a cloud-based supply chain management (SCM) solution built for businesses of all scales. Whether you are a small-scale, growing startup or an established trucking business or freight broker agent having business worth of millions of dollars, Ascend TMS works with 100% efficiency. The exclusive features that Ascend TMS software offer load management, finance and accounting management, payment management and branch management functionalities in a single suite.
The load management feature of the software enables you to track the delivery schedules, supply orders, movements of goods in and out, distances and carriers, via centralized, single-screen dashboard. You can also track the financials of your load consignments to determine the most lucrative ones. This functionality is exclusive that you won’t find in any other TMS. It lets you assign the most profitable carriers and third-party-logistics services providers to ship your loads. Through Ascend TMS’s GPS tracking ability, you can track the geographical location of your carriers on a physical map through drivers’ smart phone. Another core feature of Ascend TMS is driver payroll management module that lets you pay their salaries using diverse payment structures like per hour, per mile, per ton or per pallet.
But There is something more! Let us take you through the vast world of
Ascend TMS’s More Exclusive Features!
Ascend TMS is the system that provides users the power to control their logistics and transportation functions. Once you complete its guiding tour, you would see how easy and quick it is to add, organize and find carriers, vendors, customers and locations within its ecosystem. Unlike other TMS solutions, the freight brokers and trucking companies using this software don’t have to install, download, and setup time, credit cards and contracts. There is no need to see demo and no sales person you have to rely upon to use this TMS software. Just sign up for the free account and launch it right away for instant use.
We have observed that many trucking companies and freight brokerage agents hesitate to use TMS solution because of highly complex interface that require them to have proper training. The Ascend TMS software takes an edge here as well. Its simplistic design and interactive user interface give users all the tools they require to smoothly execute their logistics functions and, cater transportation needs efficiently. Ascend TMS doesn’t hold the users back in the slightest, it is so simple to use within minutes of creating an account.
Here we bring the most exclusive features of Ascend TMS software include:
Comprehensive Load & Dispatch Management
With Ascend TMS, thousands of trucking companies and freight brokers have successfully been managing their days to day business with an absolute ease and in a hassle-free way. Apart from showing loads in an easy-to-understand format, the load management screen displays summary of your load financials to help you track your performance.
Trailers, Split Loads, Teams & Asset Groups Management
Ascend TMS does all that! Ascend TMS is well-recognized for managing the most complex and large-scale loads and customer requests. Whether it’s about moving a single load once a weak or 1,000 loads per day, Ascend TMS works well in both cases. With Ascend TMS, an increasing number of trucking companies and freight management entities are happily managing their loads worldwide. Say goodbye to traditional specialized software as Ascend TMS offers all features under one place.
Real-time Reporting
Do you remember what your most profitable customer was in a specific city, on a specific day? Can you gauge the performance of a sales guy and dispatcher on a daily, weekly basis? Such kind of complicated questions are readily answered by Ascend TMS’s real-time reporting. Unlike other TMS Software that offer limited reporting capabilities with limitations on formats and patterns, Ascend TMS lets you enter literally any item you want to report on within seconds. Get the outcomes, both in a detailed and summarized format as quick as you blink the eyes.
ELD & Telematics –The Superior Connectivity
Irrespective of the kind of 65 ELD or telematics providers your carrier uses, Ascend TMS connects them all. Know in real-time where your freight is, get ETA’s, monitor vehicle speeds, hard braking, service hours left and geo-fencing alerts once a driver goes OWL on you. Having assets? No worries. You can now run various telematics devices in each trailer, container or truck and that is all can be connected to Ascend TMS account instantly.
Keep an Eye on Accounts
Ascend TMS has embedded accounting features that can instantly be used for managing your accounting functions related to transportation. Now what’s the twist? You can integrate your own accounting package with Ascend TMS to manage your accounting needs in a more personalized way. The built-in tools include all accounting tools like invoicing, settlements, accounts payable and receivable, payroll, financial reporting and profit and loss analysis. If you are using any third-party accounting software and want to retain its features, Ascend TMS is flexible enough to let you do that. Once you are satisfied with Ascend TMS accounting features, you can say goodbye to your outsourced services and radically reduce your cost.
Drivers’ Monitoring via Cell Phone GPS
Free of cost GPS load tracking is another excellent feature fitted into Ascend TMS. Now easily pin-point the exact location of your driver by just using their cell phone's GPS. The AscendTMS Tracker feature transmits them a text message and then simply grabs their location and the status of the load for you. The driver may also respond from his phone with the real-time status of the load with one press. There is just no app needed for this purpose. Only a special text message by Ascend TMS works it all. Use its standard text message formats to issue instructions to the driver anytime, from anywhere.
Real-Time Truckload Rate Index with InstaRate
We understand that being a trucking company or freight broker, or third-party transportation service provider, the truckload rate index is much important for you. What if we tell you that Ascend TMS offers this feature free? Yes. The free truckload rate index is available at Ascend TMS software. Get to know the latest line-haul rates for various lane, including high, medium, average and low RPM’s. Ascend TMS brings real-time rate index at your click. Enter your pickup locations and destinations in InstaRate and you would instantly be provided with average truckload rates for that lane pairing compiled from hundreds of thousands of real loads! This also helps you get valuable insight on real-time market rates so you can stay on top of the ever-changing market.
Well, the exclusive features of Ascend TMS don’t stop here, but our limit of words does ;)
Once you install the free version, you are going to exploit all these mentioned features along with many more including asset management, posting to 53 Public Load Boards, ELD connectivity, load optimization and automatic route review, cargo claims management, fraud checks, payment portals, partners management and much more!
What You Get from Free Version?
Ascend TMS is the only cloud-based TMS software solution in the market that offers its basic version free of cost! With basic account, you can enjoy more than 30 standard features with zero setup, support and training cost. Up to two users can use the TMS software free version at a time.
If you are a startup and want to explore and test the Ascend TMS, the basic version is an ideal for you to start from.
What the Paid Version Brings just at the Cost of $49.00 a Month?
Ascend TMS doesn’t charge you thousands of dollars a month!
With just $49, you can triple the benefits you get from Ascend TMS! Along with more than 30 standard features, get 15 Premium features exclusively developed by Ascend TMS for trucking companies and freight broker agents. There is no user limit on paid version while you enjoy free of cost setup, support and training.
Visit Ascend TMS