Impressive Under the Hood, Impactful Everywhere: Manhattan Associates TMS

Companies and organizations developing applications over the last ten years have had the bar raised very high. Huge disruptive companies that dominate whole sectors have set standards in usability and convenience that every other organization must try and meet to remain competitive. The likes of Amazon, Uber, and Deliveroo provide ease of use combined with powerful technological underpinnings. Together, these have changed the way people lead their lives — and companies unable to pivot and adapt are falling behind the curve.

Of course, those large players continue to innovate and push the envelope further, so competing companies need to do the same. Looking at the technology that underpins the big disruptors shows impressive levels of R&D and engineering, but consumers and businesses do not choose suppliers or vendors based on engineering excellence: it’s the best customer experience or the most impactful business outcome that makes people select one product over another.

For companies involved in supply chain, logistics, warehousing and/or distribution, the continuing drive for improvement and innovation are particular imperatives. As a single example, three-day delivery as a definition of “express” has transitioned from one day to same day — in the space of maybe two or three years. Companies unwilling or unable to innovate and offer better experiences and service will be shunned for those who can. This is true not just for logistics, but also across the business, from customer care to support, operations, and communications.

Stepping out of legacy’s shadow

Transport and logistics operations will have built up portfolios of technology solutions that underpin their businesses, representing significant investment. To achieve the elasticity and scalability required in 2021, the cloud offers a seemingly logical step. While many legacy solutions can be transplanted from on-premise, static installations onto cloud facilities, re-homing legacy applications does not address critical limitations.

Cloud-native software architected for cloud deployment, using microservices and quickly deployed code, gives companies immediate scalability of services — peaks in demand are easily assimilated, and during quieter periods, resources not used don’t add to cost burdens.

Legacy applications, especially point-products installed to fulfill a specific need in the past, rarely communicate with each other efficiently. In fact, one of the growth areas in software is in integration platforms; an expense for many companies that are simply trying to get different systems to talk to one another.

Integration at the heart

Dedicated TMS solutions engineered for the cloud, like Manhattan Active ™ Transportation Management, offer a solution to the constraints of legacy solutions by unifying all parts of the modern logistics business.

Unlike large, behemoth ERP systems from the big players (SAP, Oracle NetSuite, et al.) Manhattan Associates has three decades of supply chain and omnichannel commerce leadership running through its bloodstream.

As a platform built on the cloud and designed to provide powerful operational oversight in even the most complex supply chain scenarios, the TMS gives decision-makers near real-time data as to every element of operations in every corner of the business.

The bigger data picture

When taken holistically, the information can be used to see trends, discover bottlenecks, and improve efficiencies. However, rather than being a purely statistical exercise, the information is presented in ways that focus on outcomes that increase the quality of customer experience and improve service levels.

Smaller logistics companies are currently unable to compete with much larger competitors in the same space: big companies that can offer SLAs based on results drawn from expensive data mining systems.

The Manhattan Associates TMS brings those enterprise-level data-driven operational standards to any logistics shop, overseeing distribution, labor, transport, and automation at a granular level. The system monitors and fine-tunes operations, allowing users to offer an ever-improving service with greater and greater reliability.

The Manhattan Active TM integrates with your existing WMS and works alongside legacy systems that represent significant investment. Manhattan’s modular design and cloud architecture mean its system can be expanded to reach all operational centers of the business, providing unified, end-to-end visibility onto actionable information. No other platform offers insights to this extent, nor so much data that is directly applicable to operations.

Conclusion

Whether your company operates domestically or internationally, is an inbound or outbound specialist, uses a single carrier, or is multi-modal, the Manhattan Active Transportation Management system drives results in procurement, modeling, shipment planning, resource management, track and trace, and the financial operations of the business.

The differences with Manhattan spring from the company’s long experience in the sector, its technical excellence and the use of the very latest in scalable, elastic cloud frameworks in development and deployment. The benefits are felt by the business and its customers alike.

To learn more about Manhattan Associates’ state-of-the-art TMS, read more in this document, and schedule a demo to see for yourself.