Logistics & Transportation

With the increasing of internationalization Customers, today logistics service providers are increasingly under pressure to assert themselves successfully on the market in a narrow, highly competitive service environment. At the same time, customers are increasingly demanding a full-service provider who can take on other tasks in addition to traditional transport and logistics services. These include transport planning services, coordination with their customers partners and the handling of complete procurement and distribution tenders.

Challenges for logistics service providers

This trend towards full-service providers poses massive challenges for logistics service providers and is forcing them to adjust their organization and processes as well as to implement more flexible and modular template solutions. SAP TM supports logistics service providers in meeting the increasing requirements of a modern full-service provider in a holistic and standardized way.

Traditional service concepts are often customer-specific, individual solutions, which are usually not adaptable and are characterized by the following challenges:

Cross-customer synergy and economies of scale often cannot be realized
IT-landscape characterized by system and media disruptions
Time-consuming manual planning, sometimes still with MS Excel
High effort for manual coordination with process partners outside the TMS system
High personnel costs due to fragmented processes and lack of automation
Time-consuming handling of schedule and quantity adjustments
Customer and project-specific requirements require cost and time-consuming, special developments or the purchase of additional systems (e.g. load space optimization)
High manual billing effort for multi-level, multi-modal transports and value-added services (e.g. kit-to-order)

Transit warehouse as component of integrated logistics and transport solutions

In combination with SAP EWM, the transit warehouse functionality for logistics service providers closes an important gap in comprehensive warehouse and logistics solutions. Specifically, in addition to the transport processes, all relevant logistics processes in the area of warehousing can thus be covered on a single platform (SAP Supply Chain Execution). Examples are cross-customer consolidation and deconsolidation processes and the efficient operation of multi-customer centers.

The increasing demand for comprehensive contract logistics solutions is forcing service providers to be able to master logistics and warehousing as well as traditional transport services. Integrated holistic solutions are no longer a unique selling point of a few large players. Rather, these are a basic prerequisite for being successful in the market.

System landscapes that have grown over the years are often very heterogeneous and therefore complex and still have functional weaknesses:-

Transport and logistics processing in different systems
Integrated customer processing is personnel-intensive and prone to error
Lack of consolidation possibilities in transport and logistics (pooling)
No holistic management of warehouse and shipping units (pallets, freight units)
As a fully integrated Supply Chain Execution (SCE) platform, SAP TM and EWM helps shippers, freight operators, and logistics service providers optimally in the daily provision of services for their customers. The close interconnection of both systems efficiently supports operative planning and execution activities, avoids redundant data storage, and thus facilitates focusing on customer needs. In concrete terms, the SAP SCE platform with its transit

warehouse functionality offers service providers the following added value:-

Tracing of handling and freight units across complex logistics networks
Mapping of transit warehouses to consolidate freight in the LTL business (cost savings due to increased resource utilization)
Comply with air transport safety and seal management regulations
Freight goods handling on package unit level, not on the product level
Comprehensive use of planning data (planned deliveries, etc.) and business documents (transport orders, etc.)

The operation of complex hub structures and the associated requirements on operators require integrated solutions. With SAP TM and EWM, logistics service providers have a high-performance system platform for fulfilling current and future customer requirements quickly and efficiently.