TMS and beyond: Why carriers are integrating specialized tech
In today’s competitive freight market, efficiency and visibility are no longer optional. They’re essential elements of the supply chain, and when your customers and internal teams expect transparency from your operations, they can be the difference between growing your margins or watching them vanish.
But establishing efficient, visible processes can be a challenge for growing carriers that already have a lot on their plate. Some carriers may default to business as usual, relying on old, outdated manual processes to handle the complexity of doing business with leading shippers. Unfortunately, this can lead to bottlenecks, slowing the pace of internal work and adding additional risk to the customer experience.
Business-forward carriers are now focusing on integrating TMS (Transportation Management System) solutions into their operations, giving them more ways to handle the flow of digital information between their company and their customers. Carriers that want to take a further step can accelerate their workflows with support systems that enhance the capabilities of their TMS, offering even greater control and automation than what out-of-the-box TMS solutions can provide.
Here, we’ll break down the challenges and benefits of each growth stage as carriers integrate TMS solutions into their work:
Without a TMS: messy and manual
Fast-growing businesses that have not prioritized digital transformation can find themselves managing a flood of information by hand as they take on new business and maintain the contracts they currently have. But that initial rapid growth can plateau as carriers struggle to find new shipping partners with flexible visibility and acceptance requirements.
Dispatchers operating without a TMS may rely on manual processes like spreadsheets, whiteboards and sticky notes to communicate internally, often leading to missed messages and additional human errors. Loads might be scheduled and tracked via phone calls, texts or emails, further adding to the number of personnel hours required to keep the business moving at speed.
And because those logs and communications aren’t kept in one place, it’s even more difficult for carriers to create new efficiencies that allow them to take on new partners. Beyond the internal challenges, relying on manual processes can compromise the customer experience. Without a centralized system, it’s difficult to track where trucks are, which loads are active or offer real-time ETAs for customers.
The principal benefit of manual processes would be temporarily sidestepping the initial time and cost of digital integration, but this is a short-sighted savings in the face of even greater time and money needed to run a carrier business without a dedicated management system. When carriers don’t use automated document management and alerts, staying compliant with hours-of-service rules, maintenance schedules and safety checks become a time-consuming process full of errors and setbacks.
With a TMS: scalable and strategic
By contrast, carriers that implement a TMS see their internal processes simplified as they replace manual operations with automated workflows. A TMS can match available drivers with the best loads in seconds based on route efficiency, driver hours and equipment type—an impossible feat for a pen-and-paper operation. This means faster load assignments, fewer empty miles and improved driver satisfaction across a carrier’s entire workforce.
Additionally, many modern TMS platforms offer GPS tracking and live updates, giving dispatchers and shippers real-time visibility into truck locations, delivery ETAs and load status updates. But the benefits go beyond customer transparency; the ability to easily keep tabs on every resource in the field allows transportation companies the latitude to make better decisions as they plan for both the short and long term.
A carrier’s strategic planning is further boosted by analytics dashboards within the TMS that allow businesses to identify customers with the highest margin, optimize routes and fuel costs and improve on-time performance. Enhancing data-driven decisions can help carriers take on more of the right partners as they expand their footprint.
And as they scale, carriers can simplify compliance by integrating their TMS with a variety of other solutions, from logging devices to safety programs. Automating the flow of data between a carrier’s TMS and other solutions in their tech stack can amplify the efficiency of a carrier’s entire operational stance.
Enhancing a TMS: synchronized and streamlined
A TMS becomes significantly more powerful when integrated with other systems and data sources, transforming from an internal scheduling tool into a central nervous system for logistics. Effectively combining solutions can help eliminate silos, automate workflows and streamline decision-making internally, while also improving how carriers connect with a growing list of partners.
While a TMS can be integrated with telematics software, warehouse management systems, enterprise resource planning technology and more, the most effective integrations improve how carriers interact with shippers. Carriers that are not at the top of shipper’s transportation lists can find it hard to stay competitive, and rising in the ranks can often be a matter of meeting more of a shipper’s requirements.
Solutions that optimize load tendering and acceptance times can bridge the gap between a TMS’s capabilities and a shipper’s expectations by automating status updates as loads are picked up, in transit, delayed or delivered, keeping shipper informed without check-ins and phone calls. These solutions can also centralize logins and simplify billing by sending freight invoices directly from the TMS, shortening time to revenue and boosting cash flow.
But combining these solutions doesn’t just improve existing customer relationships—they help forge new ones. Some shippers won’t work with a carrier unless they can support certain kinds of electronic data, making an enhanced TMS solution a prerequisite to partnering with leading brands. As transportation companies take on more high-value contracts, they may find that TMS integrations are basic qualifications for doing business.
But there’s even more that an enhanced TMS system can do for carriers—especially when they’re backed by a full-service team of experts. Want to learn more about how SPS helps carriers stay in sync with their entire partner network? Learn more about SPS for 3PLs here.
- TMS and beyond: Why carriers are integrating specialized tech - May 13, 2025
- 3 impacts to streamlined shipper onboarding - May 6, 2025
- 4 impacts from streamlining load tender response times - May 6, 2025
RELATED POSTS
3 impacts to streamlined shipper onbo...
4 impacts from streamlining load tend...
Building brand trust: why transparenc...