9 Trimble Transportation What to Look for in a TMS Trimble Transportation What to Look for in a TMS Advanced Fleet Management Consulting, which provides strategic consulting services to operations that manage vehicle fleets, offers a list of items for consideration when determining specific TMS needs: Are you able to access it anywhere? It is increasingly important that a TMS solution can be enabled on tablets and smartphones, and be available via the cloud for easy remote access. Can you get more precise reporting? A best-of-breed TMS solution can gather great amounts of previously unattainable information and provide customized reports for the user’s specific needs and challenges. Is it compatible with your existing IT infrastructure? A new TMS must be compatible with the legacy management, database and reporting tools you already use. How is the quality of its technical support? Choose a provider with a timely and responsive level of support and implementation process. Is it flexible and scalable? Choose a TMS than can scale up to fluctuating needs during periods of high demand/growth without requiring a large capital investment in additional IT capacity. Consider: With companies looking to automate processes and reduce costs throughout the supply chain, the idea of a standardized transport management solution has become all the more attractive, according to Generix Group, a software editor of collaborative applications. Therefore, “it is important to understand what type of criteria a business should evaluate when looking into a future TMS, and also know how to compare the different options to see which one will work for their company in both the short and long term.” One consideration, according to Generix, is that most companies adopting a TMS are “used to a specific company transportation management setup. Transportation services have very specific work patterns in place and it is necessary to take these into account.” Comparing Options