I may be a bit biased in saying this, but one of the best articles I’ve read on purchasing a transportation management system (TMS) was written by LMS’ Tracy Meetre. The article, “TMS Shopping Made Simple” appears in the April edition of Inbound Logistics magazine.
Tracy knows what she is talking about because she was part of the LMS team that shopped for a TMS before we decided to create our own system. LMS hasn’t always been a technology and execution provider. When we opened shop in 1996 we specialized in executing transportation strategies and we used our clients’ technology to do so. As a result, we worked with a myriad of systems with varying degrees of transportation management functionality. Our hope was to find that one TMS that would meet shipper needs.
Well, we never found that TMS so we decided to create our own. Deployed in 2001, LMS’ Web-native TMS, TOTAL (Transportation Optimization Through Analysis and Leverage) does everything from order management and freight optimization to load tendering, shipment tracking and performance reporting – and a lot of other stuff, but I’ll refer you to our Web site for all of those details.
So now TMS shoppers are calling on us and taking our technology for a test drive. We receive a lot of request for proposals (RFPs) and no two are alike, which further illustrates the complexity of the TMS market. So if you are in the market for a TMS, be sure to check out Tracy’s article. Also, be sure to check out LMS’ TOTAL; it’s a great TMS with numerous benefits and that’s my unbiased opinion.
I was working at a client of LMS, so had the oppurtunity to work on TOTAL. I would agree that TOTAL offered the complete logistics solution that other TMS failed to delivered. Yes, Tracy & her team did the right decision in building TOTAL.