The Benefits of Transportation Management System and Customer Relationship Management

The Transportation Management System is of great importance for logistics management in today’s information times. TMS has its shortcomings, but its benefits for an organization are more significant and have a lasting impact. The Customer Relationship Management is the integration of people, technology, and processes which have evolved from developments in information technology and company shifts in customer-centric processes (Kerr, 2016). The organizations that are successful in the integration of CRM will gain rewards through customer loyalty and continuous profitability. But it is important to note that many companies fail in the implementation of the CRM because companies do not understand that it demands company-wide, all rounded business process that is customer focused (Helmke, 2012). The paper makes a summary of the functions of both the Transportation Management System and the Customer Relationship Management. The advantages and components for the two systems were then analyzed, and a conclusion of their benefits towards the businesses was made. 

Key words: Transportation Management System/ Customer Relationship Management

Transportation Management System

The Transportation Management System is a program that was developed to simplify the process of shipping. It is part of the supply chain management that deals with solutions for transportation (Kerr, 2016). TMS makes it possible for shippers to automate the methods they have in place and acquire crucial insights to save and cut the time spent on the future shipments. It promotes communications between the Order Management System and the Warehouse Management System or Distribution Center of an organization (Kerr, 2016). The products of TMS have logistics management hub roles in a cooperative network of shippers, customers, and carriers. The modules common in TMS are execution, route planning and optimization, payment, freight audit, load optimization, carrier management, order visibility, and advanced shipping (Kerr, 2016). This paper will elaborate about the transportation management system and the customer relationship management highlighting their roles in businesses.

The Benefits of TMS

The first benefit of TMS is that it offers technological capabilities whereby the shipper will have the technology that they require to make routing choices using carrier mix, transit time, and quotes. The centralized location of quoting will prevent the unnecessary stress and time used during the booking process (Kerr, 2016). The second benefit is that TMS simplifies the process of carrier selection by enabling a person to gage the shipment sent and do a comparison with the carrier in the network. Through the management of this procedure in a central place, one has the ability to look at previous shipments and match similar merchandise swiftly to the right carriers. The third benefit of TMS is it enables the tracking of freight that’s already on the road and provides alerts if there are any transit exceptions or delays from one location (Kerr, 2016). The last benefit is that it gives business insights whereby it will provide comprehensive insights and reporting abilities.

The Challenges of TMS

The first challenge of TMS is that it can be challenging to keep quotes organized and time to consume, as one needs to call different carriers to get quotes. Selecting the best carrier with TSM will be challenging, and shipments are never the same. Some purchases are temperature and time sensitive; others demand special delivery services while others have to be handled with extreme care (Kerr, 2016).. This means that single carrier cannot handle all the shipments. The third challenge is that tracking shipments can be very challenging as most businesses do not always use the same carriers for all their freight. As a result, the freight tracking process becomes very challenging. Gathering insights when a TMS is not in place it will be hard to ascertain which carrier has the cheapest rates or the highest percentage of on-time shipments (Kerr, 2016).

Customer Relationship Management

The CRM is an approach used in businesses to handle customer relations. A typical example IS the rewards card program that is offered by many customers (Helmke, 2012). Stores usually provide their customers with free cards which make it possible for them to access special deals and discounts every time they swipe their card when they checkout. The card also tracks every purchase of the customer and enables the stores to establish a customer profile that is exceptionally detailed based on their purchasing habits (Helmke, 2012).

Components of CRM

During the first phase of the CRM, the software puts together the information and documents of the customer into one CRM database so it can be easy for business users to access and manage them (Helmke, 2012). There have been additional functions that have been added to the CRM systems over time that have made it more useful. These additional features include recording of some customer interactions over the phone, email, social media, and other modules based on the ability of the system, automating a number of workflow automation processes (Helmke, 2012). They include things like alerts and calenders, tasks, and enabling the leaders to track productivity and perfomance depending on the what the system is logged with (Helmke, 2012).

 Other components include marketing automation which mechanizes repetitive duties to improve marketing abilities in the business lifecycle at different. For instance, it can send the prospects marketing materials automatically by social media or mail as the system receive the sales prospects with the aim of changing a sales lead to a full-fledged customer (Helmke, 2012). The next component is sales force automation which are tools that track interactions with customers and automate specific company functions of sales cycle that are essential to attract, follow leads, and acquire new clients. The third component of CRM is automatic contact center which is designed to lessen tiring aspects of the job of a contact center agent. The automatic center can involve prerecording audio that helps to solve problems for the customer by distributing information (Helmke, 2012).

Geolocation technology is a CRM system component that can develop geographic marketing campaigns depending on the physical location of the customer sometimes combining it with popular location-based GPS apps (Helmke, 2012). CRM systems also have workflow automation which aids the business to optimize processes by consolidating mundane workloads thus allowing the employee to concentrate on creative and demanding tasks. The CRM is also composed of system management whereby sales that leads are tracked allowing the sales teams consolidate, analyse, and track data for leads in central position.

The Benefits of CRM

Customer Relationship Management system has the ability to increase sales by up to thirty-seven percent, productivity by up to forty-four percent, and forecast accuracy by up to forty-eight percent (Helmke, 2012). One of the main benefits of the CRM system is that it can aid in identifying and result in new leads easily and also categorize them accurately. The complete, precise, centrally saved data about clients and prospects, the sales employees can concentrate on the right customers resulting in a gained competitive advantage (Helmke, 2012).

The second benefit of CRM is that it increases referrals from existing customers as a company gets to understand their clients’ better, cross-selling and up-selling opportunities get clearer which provides the opportunity to acquire new business from the existing customers. Information also ensures that the business is able to keep their customers happy with better service. The third benefit is that CRM improves products and services through information on their customers’ views of the organization.

Types of CRM Technology

There are four primary vendors of CRM software which are Microsoft, Salesforce, Oracle, and SAP. Other vendors are popular among the small to midmarket organizations while the four mentioned above are the first choice of large companies. The CRM technology is provided as either Cloud-based CRM, On-premises CRM, or Open source CRM (Helmke, 2012).

Conclusion

The Transportation Management System is a software that was developed to simplify the process of shipping. It is time savings as it reduces the time spent in conducting shipments and an organization can also be able to track freight. The Customer Relationship Management aids the company to understand their customers, so they can improve their service and productivity resulting in their clients providing them with referrals.

References

Helmke, S. (2012). Customer Relationship Management. Statistical Methods in Customer Relationship Management,

1-10. doi:10.1002/9781118349212.ch1

Kerr, P. (2016). Transportation System Management and Operations. Transportation Planning Handbook, 355-410. doi:10.1002/9781119174660.ch10