How Route Optimization SaaS Solutions Help Logistics Managers

Customization and segmentation, velocity, internal collaboration and agility are some crucial challenges and problems that logistics managers are currently facing. In addition, the supply chain industry is constantly changing, due to the rapid evolution of technology.

These never ending requirements also bring us some very useful online tools and software solutions for the new requirements in logistics management, such as:

• GPS Trackers
• Internal Communication
• Route Optimization
• Warehouse Management
• Flight and Cargo Management
• Scheduling
• Billing
• Documentation, Consolidation and Container Management
• Shipping Management
• Freight Forwarding
• Contract Management

...And many others.

All these software and cloud-based tools, provided by SaaS companies, help the logistics and supply chain industry to face challenges in a better way, contribute to small companies to be competitive maintaining reasonable costs, to be able to reach foreign markets, and to be innovative, which is one of the best ways for a small or medium logistics operator to compete and beat the bigger players.

What are the main benefits that route optimization software solutions provide to logistics managers?

Cost and ROI. According to Inbound Logistics,

“SaaS is sold as a service, not a product, which increases and accelerates a user's return on investment as it moves from implementation to integration and finally optimization. There are no costly upgrades.”

Warehouse News (UK) states that SaaS management systems are usually easy and quick to implement and start using.

They’re normally up and running “in just one to three months”, so your business begins to see a positive ROI earlier than any another type of solution.

“The value of modern cloud-based solutions -Supply Chain Digital says-  is that they are architected from the ground up to be highly configurable in anticipation of business change.”

As we previously explained, this is one key factor that allows a company to achieve market differentiation, and be the first to identify new business opportunities. Integrated metrics for logistics managers. KPI’s have always been essential to the logistics industry, but without technology it has been difficult to use them at their best, and to coordinate all of them to have a clear and wide view of how your business is doing.

Thanks to SaaS solutions and cloud computing systems, logistic managers can integrate all metrics in one dashboard, to see how performance evolves, in real time or as a record, and they even could foresee different scenarios.

Scalability

“In transportation management, scalability can be as simple as having immediate access to additional carriers already in the network. SaaS allows users to more easily flex to demand; onboard new customers, carriers, and suppliers; or add and upgrade services on demand,” Inbound Logistics explains.

Customization and Easy Upgrading

“Users can facilitate on-demand changes in customer business rules, readily introduce new transport event messages with trading partners, enable rich reporting and data visualization, and other important capabilities that constrain legacy systems -Supply Chain Digital stands-. And when software modification is needed, studies show that solutions built with modern SaaS technologies can be quickly modified for less than 20% of the cost to modify a legacy application.”

Accessibility and Collaboration

“With more partners integrated on a single platform and more data streaming across the network -Inbound Logistics explains- individual users benefit by having access to more robust and accurate information. Reporting and benchmarking performance data provides business intelligence that can be shared among all users in the network to create additional value.”

"Besides, thanks to efficient data-sharing decisions can be taken in a better and faster way, and that helps companies to have better management results.”

What are the main benefits you have experienced in using a SaaS solution for your route optimization?