SAP Transportation Management


What Is Transportation Management?

Transportation Management involves managing the transport operations from freight carrier selection to route mapping to fuel costing and track and trace of goods as they are transported throughout the supply chain. It also involves the regular maintenance of vehicles. Companies also rely on transportation management systems (TMS) that exchange data with warehouses and distribution centers for order coordination.

What is the benefit of implementing transportation management solutions? In today’s fast-paced business landscape, companies want to streamline their operations and automate mundane tasks that can consume time and resources doing them manually. These systems are also critical for data visibility into shipping processes and customer engagement.

What Is Transportation Management?

Transportation Management involves managing the transport operations from freight carrier selection to route mapping to fuel costing and track and trace of goods as they are transported throughout the supply chain. It also involves the regular maintenance of vehicles. Companies also rely on transportation management systems (TMS) that exchange data with warehouses and distribution centers for order coordination.

What is the benefit of implementing transportation management solutions? In today’s fast-paced business landscape, companies want to streamline their operations and automate mundane tasks that can consume time and resources doing them manually. These systems are also critical for data visibility into shipping processes and customer engagement.

SAP Transportation Management Solution

SAP offers its own transportation management solution. Capabilities of SAP TM include:

  • Rate automation to effectively choose your logistics provider
  • Synchronization of sales and order scheduling for on-time customer delivery
  • Pallet building with rules-based optimization
  • Visualization tool for planning loads.

Is SAP TM a good choice for your freight operation? Yanpeng Tan, Senior SAP Transportation Management Consultant, Novigo, shared several steps with SAPinsider about evaluating the solution.

  1. Identify the pain points and bottlenecks with your current solution.
  2. Outline wish-to-improve points and turn them into a requirement list.
  3. Understand what functionalities SAP TM can provide and how the functional requirements can be satisfied.
  4. Conduct an SAP TM workshop and we strongly recommend a proof-of-concept approach to view how SAP TM works and get an idea of how the implementation will be executed.
  5. Draw a high-level solution by incorporating inputs from different stakeholders.

Key Considerations for SAPinsiders

  • Optimizing Supply Chain Visibility with SAP Transportation Management. In this Q&A featuring Yanpeng Tan, Senior SAP Transportation Management Consultant, Novigo, learn how to gain greater efficiencies in both carrier management and tendering processes with SAP Transportation Management. According to Tan, “SAP TM provides sophisticated functionality to manage contract information for each individual carrier in the SAP TM space, and it will be used to calculate cost for each freight shipment. SAP TM supports interactive tendering for daily operation via a collaboration portal.”
  • A Look at Some Enhancements Under the SAP Transportation Management Hood. Rajesh Ray, who leads the SAP SCM product area at IBM Global Business Services, and Sanket Kulkarni, Solution Architect at Accenture Services Private Limited, examine the functionalities of SAP TM, including truck load management, strategic freight procurement, and collaboration portal. Read this article to learn about industry-specific functionalities of rail car, ocean carrier, and parcel, as well as integration functionalities with other SAP modules.

Other vendors in the transportation management space include: GoSCM, SaM Solutions, and Odyssey Logistics & Technology.

20 results

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    The ILA strike that halted US East and Gulf Coast ports was resolved with a tentative agreement to extend collective bargaining until January 2025, amidst ongoing challenges faced by the US shipping industry, including high container imports and geopolitical conflicts affecting logistics.

  2. photo of light at the end of a tunnel and a person walking toward it | REALTECH SmartChange solution for SAP Transport Management and in-process quality checks

    Find the Light at the End of the Tunnel With In-Process Quality Checks

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    In the SAP Transport Management module, the insurance of the quality of transport requests is crucial to avoid various risks that could affect the integrity of the system and lead to problems in the production environment.

  3. Managing Supply Chain Risks during Uncertain Times

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    A looming strike by 45,000 International Longshoremen’s Association workers at East and Gulf Coast ports starting October 1, 2024, may severely disrupt supply chains and exacerbate existing delays in cargo handling during the peak holiday shipping season, highlighting the need for a robust TMS.

  4. Unifying Fleet and Transportation Planning for Maximizing Resources and Minimizing Costs

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    Integrating the planning of private fleets and for-hire carriers into a unified software platform enables retailers and manufacturers to enhance operational efficiency, reduce costs, and improve customer service by optimizing logistics and minimizing the inefficiencies associated with managing these resources separately.

  5. Reducing Costs with Optimized SAP Transportation Planning Processes

    This webinar from 4flow will highlight the powerful synergy between SAP transportation planning and enhanced transportation optimization tools. Our experts in SAP integration and transportation optimization will showcase how this combination can revolutionize your transportation planning into a strategic asset.

  6. 4flow Webinar Breaking the Stereotypes of SAP TM for Inbound Logistics

    Many businesses still overlook SAP TM for inbound logistics, seeing it as an outbound solution. In this webinar, we’re challenging this belief. Watch the webinar to learn how to leverage new modules and functions in SAP TM to get the most out of your inbound transportation.

  7. Smart Temperature Tracking for Sensitive Shipments Safely with Descartes MacroPoint

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    Ensuring the integrity of temperature-sensitive goods during transit is crucial for preserving product quality and safety, whether it is perishable food, life-saving medications, or delicate plants. However, shippers often struggle with challenges, such as handling a high volume of refrigerated carriers, managing delayed and manual data communication, and coping with portal and data overload. These...…

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    In this e-book, we will show you what you need to know and how to navigate international shipping with SAP solutions.

  10. SAP TM

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    The Vehicle Scheduling and Routing (VSR) optimizer in SAP Transportation Management (TM) is used extensively for vehicle route optimization. Like every other route optimization solution, heuristic leverages various modeling parameters to develop optimal routes. However, route optimization heuristics are computationally intense, and therefore, model run times are typically long. This article discusses three approaches that…