We are currently facing another shift in the tides of the freight market. Freight technology buyers should carefully assess their mindset when it comes to purchasing new technology in times of a less robust market.
“You have to consider the people that are going to be using your technology,” said Jesse Carmichael, senior product manager at Descartes. “You want to set them up for success and ensure you see that return on the investment.”
He added that there are a couple of specific points buyers should consider when buying freight technology.
Maintaining service expectations and providing a positive user experience are key to overcoming market challenges. An enhanced user experience is critical to promote efficiency and continued success and will enable more overall productivity. “You’re going to need this to retain and grow market share in downcycles,” Carmichael said.
A positive user experience will also allow the job of the user to be much easier. By removing redundancies, increasing automation where needed and onboarding users more efficiently, users feel less stress and increase adoption, resulting in improved performance.
It is also incredibly important that buyers fully evaluate a TMS up-front, prior to buying. Integration and connectivity are crucial points to consider when evaluating a TMS. Buyers should choose a TMS that fits their specific needs and can scale with their business.
The TMS should also have a large pool of integration partners that buyers can access to provide users more overall productivity and data to improve efficiency, Carmichael added. This reduces the complexity and cost of implementation.
“We’re seeing a lot of new and exciting tools coming to the market. You want to make sure that your TMS is compatible with a lot of different vendors and the overall user experience is customizable,” he said.
As a previous freight broker, Carmichael has experienced the pain points of the industry when it comes to inefficient technology. As leader of the product team at Descartes Aljex, he is not the only one with industry experience and boasts this to be one of the company’s best traits.
“I think it’s important for product teams to have this experience in order to design a product to facilitate and hopefully alleviate some of these pain points,” he said.
A leader in supply chain technology solutions, Descartes works to improve logistics and supply chain productivity, performance and security through innovative technology and supply chain management solutions.
Descartes has recently launched its newest product, Aljex Live — a third-generation TMS with a smarter, faster and more secure user experience. To learn more or to sign up for a demo, visit aljex.com.