We believe MercuryGate TMS is the best transportation management system on the market. However, the TMS features are so vast that many customers still underutilize the platform.
1. TMS Features for 2025: Automated Workflows
For example, let’s say a carrier knows a load will encounter a detention charge and alerts you. An automated workflow creates an extra step in the typical workflow that pushes approval for that charge to the right party so they can review the information received and approve it. When the carrier invoice comes in, the system auto-matches the invoice because the additional charge was expected. Without that workflow, that invoice won’t match. You’re forced to research the detention charge.
It’s a difference of a minute or two versus hours spent looking back 30-45 days to determine if the charge is valid. Now, try repeating that process every single time it happens.
However, suppose you take advantage of MercuryGate’s defined workflows and the dynamic rules that alter those workflows only when certain conditions are met. In that case, you ensure that things get done right AND efficiently, just as our customer did in this automation case study.
2. TMS Features for 2025: Exception Management
Managing by exception allows you to look only where attention is needed. Without it, you may divide your attention across dozens of tasks in chronological or some other order.
When you email a carrier to see if they’ll accept a load, you don’t sit at your desk to wait for a response. You move on to other tasks, hoping you remember where you are with the load and do not forget to check for a reply.
Time passes, and you can’t remember if you got that load secured. The panic sets in. You’re manually searching for the load acceptance. And if the load is not covered, you start the process over again with less time to get the load secured.
Imagine returning from vacation and having all the important emails in your inbox flagged and the clutter pushed to the side. Wouldn’t that be nice?
3. TMS Features for 2025: Optimization
Are you putting all freight into the TMS? If not, you’re missing out on strategies to reduce your freight spend. Optimization is a cost-reducing TMS feature for shippers and logistics service providers.
Think about the cost savings associated with one less truck on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis. When you utilize MercuryGate’s cutting-edge optimization feature, your load planners are happier with their work balance, and you gain the confidence that every shipment is on the best route for the best price.
4. TMS Feature for 2025: Final Mile
Final Mile is a powerful product that integrates directly into your MercuryGate TMS.
Let’s be real. You can have the most efficient supply chain, but if you don’t pick up things when you say you will or deliver on time, you won’t have happy customers. Taking the step to control your first or final mile provides critical benefits:
- Routes are optimized.
- Drivers easily follow plans and communicate exceptions.
- Dispatchers efficiently react to intra-day changes.
Whether you are an LTL carrier, managing white-glove deliveries, delivering parcels, or managing courier operations, the Final Mile solution can be easily configured to meet the needs of your business.
Relying solely on your workforce of experienced planners and dispatchers — who can leave at any time — puts your business at risk and limits growth. Our Final Mile solution can stand alone, or it can be used to extend your TMS to provide automation, delivery exception management, and optimization at every level.
And with the integration now available in the TMS, Final Mile brings exceptional visibility across your entire network, which brings us to our final TMS feature to discover in 2025.
5. TMS Features for 2025: TMS-Embedded Visibility
But let’s face it, if you were 100% confident in on-time delivery, you wouldn’t need to care about the ETA status. Sure, it’s nice to know the location of your order, but the real power of visibility in your business comes from the choices you can make and actions you can take based on that knowledge. That intelligence-informed execution is why it is so important to have visibility connected and embedded in your TMS.
For example, you learn that a big shipment’s ETA shifted from Monday to Friday. Now what?
You may want to call the customer proactively with an updated delivery ETA. That level of service helps your customer plan labor and potentially save money versus having people show up for a job that isn’t there to complete.
Take the service a step further. What if part of that order can’t wait? Because you could drill directly from an alert to the underlying execution, you can take immediate steps to split out the critical part of the order and find another way to deliver it. Maybe by shifting it from a planned rail move to over the road or from over the road to air.
Everyone will find themselves in a similar situation at some point. What you do to get yourself out of it and prevent a repeat scenario in the future — that truly matters. MercuryGate TMS is equipped with visibility features that take you from tracking shipments to taking informed action across your entire freight network — for all modes in all geographies.
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If you’re not using these features, you’re not realizing the full value of your investment in our products. We want to fix that.
Reach out to your MercuryGate Customer Success representative and start a conversation to create the best iteration of our TMS to support your operations.
