Transportation Management System - Client Implementation
TMS product implementation for a large US based B2B client.
The Context
Situation
The client is a large B2B organisation specialising in providing a comprehensive range of pipeline and industrial products and services. They have more than 40 warehouses across the US from where they deliver a large catalogue of products to their customers through a mix of third-party parcel and LTL carriers as well their own fleet of vehicles. They had a well-established WMS deployed at all their warehouses which served them well. The challenge was there was no application or tool to manage the third-party carriers and their own fleet and keep a track of the shipments going out from the warehouses.
The Approach
Insight
Warehouse visits and stakeholder sessions exposed a shipping process running on a rudimentary, outdated station application requiring fully manual data entry per order - driving errors, unnecessary workload, and compliance gaps (e.g., hazardous materials data) that triggered carrier penalties. Shipments handed to third-party carriers had zero tracking visibility, and the in-house delivery fleet operated with no route optimisation or vehicle tracking, inflating fuel costs and leaving deliveries unmonitored.
These weren't isolated inefficiencies - together they were driving real operational and financial losses for the client, making the case for a modern, advanced transportation management solution unavoidable.
Goals
The goals of this implementation were defined as follows.
• Integrate the TMS application with the client's upstream WMS application to fetch complete order details
• Integrate parcel and LTL carrier APIs to enable real-time rate shopping for the TMS users
• Integrate with routing APIs to build efficient routes for the client's fleet
• Implement the driver mobile application for fleet drivers to assign optimised routes to them and track their productivity
• Generate compliant shipping labels and BOLs for shipments assigned to in-house fleet
• Store shipping costs with complete breakup for reporting
• Enable shipment tracking for all types of carriers integrated to the platform
The requirement was to replace the existing shipping solution with a full-fledged transportation management system that drives shipments for 3rd party carriers as well as in-house fleet. The TMS should give control and visibility of shipping costs, tracking, exception handling and support in driving costs down.
Navigation
Led end-to-end client implementation across 5 phases, managing continuous change requests.
Phase 1 (MVP, 4 locations): WMS integration (users, facilities, fleet, orders, carriers), carrier API integration (UPS, FedEx, CH Robinson), training. Order processing time dropped from 6-7 min to <1 min (parcel), 10-12 to ~2 min (LTL), 7-8 to <2 min (fleet).
Phase 2: Manual rate shopping, margin calculation logic, in-house fleet BOL generation, cost breakup reporting. Achieved up to 20% shipping savings, 40% fleet utilisation increase, trips/vehicle/day doubled (2 to 4).
Phase 3 (all facilities): Order consolidation, upgraded routing APIs (v3) for automated route optimisation, live dispatch tracking, mid-route stop insertion - reduced third-party carrier reliance further.
Phase 4: Offline-capable driver app for remote, no-service locations.
Phase 5: Order cancellation flows, exception/re-attempt handling, HOS compliance, LTL freight class calculator - eliminating carrier penalties.
The Results
Achievement
This project was major win for the client in not only financial terms, but also operationally. There was no visibility of shipping costs they were incurring and the in-house fleet utilisation and efficiency was declining. There was cost savings for the client also in terms of IT infrastructure; their old application was deployed on premise while the new TMS was completely SaaS based. Reduced dependence on third-party carriers, better control and visibility of in-house fleet and optimised routes further increased revenues.
Learnings
Phased rollouts backed by real pilot data made the case for scale at every step - a 3-week MVP pilot proving dramatic processing-time gains, and a 4-week rate shopping pilot showing 20% cost savings and 40% fleet utilisation, each justified moving to the next phase before full commitment. Splitting large, high-effort features like offline mobile support into their own dedicated phase kept focus sharp and let each capability get proper validation before deployment.