These are discussion highlights from our Supply Chain Board call on TMS
The call grew quiet when the supply chain director from a major manufacturing company shared his integration nightmare: “We do a lot of manual updates, pull stuff into spreadsheets, update our ERP system to feed our WMS. The biggest gap is just not having it integrated fully.”
This wasn’t supposed to happen. Like most enterprise buyers, his team had selected their Transportation Management System based on vendor promises of seamless integration and automated workflows. Two years later, they’re actively shopping for a replacement.
He wasn’t alone in that virtual roundtable of 12 senior supply chain executives. Their stories revealed a pattern of TMS implementations that fell short of expectations—and the hard-won insights that could help other organizations avoid similar pitfalls.
The $2 Million Customization Regret
One of the most candid moments came from a CPG executive who had overseen TMS implementations at multiple Fortune 500 companies. Her evolution from customization advocate to standardization champion tells a story many organizations are living through right now.
“In my past I’ve been like ‘hey, we have this scenario—there’s a private fleet, or a shuttle, or special billing requirements’—and really pushed for customization,” she explained. “I’ve customized the heck out of stuff.”
The wake-up call came during a business pivot that required new capabilities. “You really start to get yourself pigeonholed with one provider or one vendor,” she realized. “I’ve now moved to the point where we really have to prove a business case and an absolute failure in the business before we customize.”
Her current philosophy: “Fight the customization to the absolute point where you say ‘nope, we absolutely 100% cannot get around it.'” The reason? “The more customized it is, the more complex, but then it’s also a lot more babysitting, a lot more points of failure.”
This perspective was echoed by an enterprise leader dealing with 30,000 ERP customizations that are now blocking AI adoption: “Your customizations actually block you from automation—now they’ve made your thing more of a Frankenstein than useful.”
The 85% Reality Check
Another eye-opening story emerged from a company’s attempt to implement comprehensive shipment visibility. Despite contractual requirements, weekly carrier meetings, and dedicated relationship management, they achieved only 85% carrier compliance with their real-time tracking platform.
“It was constant babysitting,” the executive recalled. “You have to have someone who will reach out to the carriers, but it’s going to be you saying ‘I’m paying you guys, I need you to really do this.'”
The interesting revelation: multiple other leaders reported hitting the same 85% ceiling, suggesting this isn’t a vendor-specific limitation but an industry reality. The successful companies learned to focus their efforts strategically rather than pursuing comprehensive coverage.
“We decided to focus on what we really cared about—do we care about interplant transfers as much as outbound to customer?” The 85% they did achieve delivered significant value through exception management: “These ones didn’t pick up, I got to do something right now.”
The Startup vs. Enterprise Dilemma
A beverage company’s vendor selection process illustrated the real-world trade-offs between innovation and stability. With a team of one managing 30,000 annual shipments, they evaluated multiple approaches:
- The AI-Forward Startup: “Pando—they were pretty slick, but we shied away because they didn’t have support. We were leery to say the software is great, but can we actually manage this business by ourselves right out of the gates?”
- The Full-Service Provider: “Rider would hold your hand through the process, but then three years later, if we really want to be independent, we’d be doing another implementation.”
- The Flexible Middle Ground: They ultimately chose E2Open for its willingness to provide a scaling support model: “Start off with heavy support, and as we gain comfort executing ourselves, we can pare back the support and go to a software-only model.”
The key insight: matching vendor capabilities to organizational reality, not aspirational capabilities.
The Multi-Modal Reality
An industrial company took a radically different approach that challenges conventional wisdom about platform consolidation. Instead of seeking a single TMS solution, they deliberately chose different systems for different transportation modes: Princeton for trucking, Intelletrans for rail, and Bico for ocean freight.
“I’m finding they tend to be smaller companies, so we like being able to call the CEO and say ‘hey, we need this new feature added to the TMS,'” the executive explained. “That’s the advantage. The disadvantage is 24/7 support isn’t going to happen, but that fits our model.”
Their experience with SAP S/4HANA integration was surprisingly positive: “SAP will tell you that integration is difficult, but we seem to be able to make those integrations relatively easily.”
This approach contradicts the typical consolidation advice but worked for their specific operational requirements and internal capabilities.
The Architecture Complexity Trap
Perhaps the most complex implementation story came from a global manufacturer managing 17 production plants with different ERP systems. Their Oracle-based TMS required building an entirely custom integration layer using SAP Neptune to create data lakes and connection points.
“We created this very complex network of systems,” the executive explained. While it works well for road transport, “they don’t work so well for ocean or express transports.” The system includes separate apps for suppliers and carriers to prevent direct TMS access—a security-driven decision that added significant architectural complexity.
Their real-time visibility pilot reveals ongoing challenges: “FourKites is saying the carrier is fully onboarded and you have visibility, but actually we don’t. So we have a low percentage of lanes tracking.”
The Business Case Reality
Multiple leaders emphasized that successful implementations resulted from business-driven rather than technology-driven decisions. As one executive who had implemented three different TMS systems noted: “Usually the people that come with gripes and complaints didn’t know what they wanted out of the TMS before they even started the process.”
The most experienced implementer offered this guidance: “Come ready to present those expectations, make them clear, make them concise, make sure you get what you want.”
Another leader stressed the importance of honest capability assessment: “Don’t overpay for something because it’s shiny new unless you have a true use case. There are so many products that can give you 85 to 95% of what you need out there.”
The Strategic Lesson
These implementation stories reveal that TMS success depends less on vendor selection and more on organizational alignment. The leaders who achieved their goals shared common approaches:
- Honest assessment of internal capabilities
- Clear definition of business requirements before vendor evaluation
- Realistic expectations about integration complexity
- Strategic focus rather than comprehensive feature pursuit
- Resistance to customization without compelling business cases
As AI-enabled transportation management becomes reality, these peer-validated insights provide a practical framework for navigating an increasingly complex vendor landscape. The message from these experienced practitioners is clear: success comes from matching vendor capabilities to organizational reality, not the other way around.
