Clarios has appointed oTMS as the TMS of choice to connect, optimize and automate its logistics operations.

Clarios (a subsidiary of Brookfield Business Partners) is the leading advanced automotive battery solutions with one-third of the vehicles powered by Clarios batteries worldwide. Clarios has a mission to create the world’s best batteries, essential for the evolving future of transportation.

The automotive industry is one of the industries with the most challenging supply chain. With highly complex networks and a Just-in-Time business model. Clarios recognized the importance of a well-run logistics operations and the need to digitalize its logistics to remain competitive.

The appointment of oTMS as a TMS provider shows Clarios continued commitment to sustainability through adoption of oTMS, an enterprise Saas TMS technology that will bring about optimization within its internal logistics operations.

The implementation of oTMS will help solve Clarios critical pain points and deliver on impacts that are in alignment with Clarios’s business goals.

Connectivity

oTMS will connect multiple systems through 2-way EDI integration with Clarios’s ERP and WMS.

This will completely eliminate the time needed to exchange information and data entry. It also ensures 100% information accuracy across all systems.

Best Practices in Procurement

With the oTMS RFQ, contract management and rate management module, Clarios will be able to make the best procurement decisions at a glance, ensuring carriers who provide good service and are cost-efficient are rewarded.

Optimization through Automated Transport Planning

Clarios can now optimize its entire transport planning across multiple plants, distribution centers (DC) and across different logistics workflows (spare parts, finished goods, milk-run and ad hoc) and ensure cost and carriers are optimized while keeping to Just-In-Time (JIT) delivery service level agreements (SLA).

Multi-party Logistics Workflow Execution

With the oTMS carrier platform and driver app, oTMS connects all parties within the logistics chain to ensure everyone receives and provides prompt information on every transport order. This allows all parties to focus on solving exception handling and achieving their target KPIs.

Freight Audit and Payment

Auto-rating of all freight bills against rate tariffs not only saves time but eliminates errors from manual rating and puts a stop to potential logistics spend leakage.

Make Better Business Decisions with Insights

The oTMS Dashboard and Analytics allows Clarios to have better insight of their daily/ monthly/ quarterly operations allowing for better conversations with suppliers, customers, carriers thereby facilitating continuous improvement (CI) in its operations.

oTMS is excited to embark on this logistics digitalization journey alongside Clarios.

SHANGHAI, CHINA– April 25, 2023: oTMS, a leader in cloud transport management platform in China, today announced that it is mentioned as a Notable Vendor in 2023 Asia/Pacific Context: ‘Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems’* published by Gartner, Inc.

According to this report, “The annual spend on supply chain execution (SCE) software in APAC to exceed $850 million through 2026, up from nearly $600 million through 2021. The annual TMS software spend in APAC will be approximately 28% of that on SCE, or $160 million through 2021. The forecast indicates that this will exceed $220 million by 2026, growing at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.2% in constant currency terms (base 2020).”

At the meantime, customers’ transportation management needs are also evolving. Gartner mentioned in the report that “Organizations within the Asia/Pacific market have historically looked for transportation management solutions that are execution-focused. Capabilities such as transportation planning and route optimization are not typically prioritized by shippers. Those capabilities are highly desired by 3PL organizations and logistics service providers. With the increasing demand in retail and e-commerce, there is some shifting in this regard. This is especially true in countries such as India, China and Vietnam. Companies within those countries are starting to investigate planning and route optimization capabilities to better support customer demands, particularly for last-mile deliveries in urban locations.

There is also increasing interest among companies in the region to have transportation and logistics technologies integrated. In response, vendors in the region often offer a suite of logistics-focused capabilities. This can include TMS, dock scheduling, yard management and warehouse management. Many companies prefer to work with a single technology vendor that offers multiple solutions in an attempt to unify their logistics processes.”

We believe these trends have also been noted by oTMS when serving its clients. Since the launch of oTMS’s transportation management system, it has been recognized by many large and medium-sized shippers because of its pioneering SaaS TMS + APP model and transparent and visible features. It connects manufacturers, carriers, drivers, distributors & retailers on the same platform to manage carriers, shipments, freight billing and performance analysis. Today, oTMS is one of the leading TMS vendors in the Asia-Pacific market and has more than 9,000 carriers and 650,000 active drivers on its platform.

In 2022, oTMS Singapore entity established and oTMS launched an international edition of SaaS TMS independently deployed in Singapore, dedicated to helping enterprises in the Asia-Pacific region to accelerate the digitalization of their local and international logistics and transportation management systems, effectively supporting the continuous growth of their business in the Asia-Pacific region.

Mirek Dabrowski, oTMS, CEO and co-founder, commented: “Since we setup our Singapore company to focus on Asia Pacific expansion last August, I am excited that  we have already started operation in Indonesia and Thailand and planning to add another 3 countries this year. Transport market nature in some of these markets offers higher potential for planning and optimization features than China.”

In the future, oTMS will continue to lead the way, providing customers with outstanding solutions, accelerating the digital transformation of the industry and making transportation smart.

* Asia/Pacific Context: ‘Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems’ by Brock Johns, Oscar Sanchez Duran. March 28, 2023. This content is part of a larger body of research on this topic. Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems

Gartner Disclaimer

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and MAGIC QUADRANT is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s Research & Advisory organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

ChatGPT, a chat robot program developed by OpenAI in the United States, was released in November 2022. It swept the Internet just a few months after opening user registration, skyrocketing to the top stream in the AI ​​field. This natural language processing tool conducts conversations by learning and understanding human language. It is trained based on datasets of human conversations and can also perform tasks such as writing emails, video scripts, copywriting, translation, and code. Users are using this new technology to explore more possibilities, its many potential uses will also affect various industries.

We chatted with ChatGPT about topics such as logistics, transportation management.

Q1: What are the current challenges facing enterprise logistics management?

ChatGPT: There are many challenges facing enterprise logistics management, including:

Diversified demands: As consumers continue to demand faster and higher quality logistics services, enterprises need to provide more flexible and diverse logistics solutions.

1. Transportation cost control: Enterprises need to constantly seek ways to reduce transportation costs to improve competitiveness and profitability.
2. Supply chain risk management: Globalization and complex supply chains require enterprises to address more risks, such as weather disasters, political instability, trade wars, etc.
3. Data management and analysis: Large amounts of logistics data need to be managed and analyzed to make more accurate and wise decisions.
4. Application of intelligent technology: With the development of technologies such as the Internet of Things, big data, and artificial intelligence, enterprises need to adapt to the trend of intelligence and apply it to logistics management to improve efficiency and reduce costs.

These challenges require enterprises to constantly innovate and improve in logistics management to respond to changes and improve competitiveness.

Q2: What is the current level of digitalization of logistics in Chinese enterprises? How will it develop in the future?

ChatGPT: The current level of digitalization of logistics in Chinese enterprises has improved, but there is still room for improvement. In recent years, more and more logistics companies have begun to try digital transformation, promoting transportation management systems (TMS), warehouse management systems (WMS), and other digital tools, and gradually adopting technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and blockchain to improve logistics efficiency and reliability.

In the future, the level of digitalization of logistics in Chinese enterprises will continue to improve. On the one hand, the government will increase its support for digital transformation of logistics, promoting the widespread application of digital technologies. On the other hand, logistics companies will also pay more attention to digital transformation, accelerating the application and innovation of digital technologies to improve logistics efficiency and competitiveness. In addition, with the emergence and application of new technologies, future logistics digitization will become more diverse, intelligent, and sustainable.

Q3: What is the role of TMS in logistics management?

ChatGPT: TMS plays an important role in logistics management by providing a centralized platform for managing transportation operations, optimizing transportation routes, reducing transportation costs, and improving overall supply chain efficiency.

Q4: What kind of enterprises need a transportation management system?

ChatGPT: Enterprises with transportation operations such as manufacturers, distributors, retailers, and logistics service providers can benefit from a transportation management system.

Q5: How do you evaluate the oTMS transportation management platform?

ChatGPT: oTMS is a comprehensive transportation management platform that provides users with a wide range of transportation management features. It is highly customizable, user-friendly, and efficient. The platform is constantly evolving to incorporate new features and technologies to meet the needs of its users.

Q6: In which direction do you think oTMS should develop? How to provide more value to customers?

ChatGPT: As a mature transportation management system, oTMS can develop in the following directions to provide more value to customers:

1. Intelligence: oTMS can further integrate artificial intelligence technologies such as machine learning and natural language processing to achieve automated decision-making, predictive analysis, and intelligent scheduling, enhancing the intelligence of transportation management.
2. Diversification: oTMS can strengthen its support for different logistics scenarios, such as enhancing management functions for sea and air transportation, and providing cross-border logistics services to meet the needs of customers in diversified logistics scenarios.
3. Ecology: oTMS can create a logistics digital ecosystem, aggregating logistics upstream and downstream resources, sharing information and services, and providing customers with more comprehensive and convenient logistics services and support.
4. Sustainability: oTMS can strengthen the management of logistics transportation sustainability, such as supporting energy conservation and emissions reduction, green transportation, carbon neutrality, etc., to meet customers’ environmental requirements.

In summary, in the future, oTMS can further develop in the directions of intelligence, diversification, ecology, and sustainability, to provide more value to customers.

ChatGPT summarizes the challenges in the field of logistics management and the benefits brought by the system, but the details can only be truly understood by the managers deep in it.

In the field of logistics and transportation, having sophisticated planning capabilities and agility, enabled by improved end-to-end visibility of supply chain, will be both key to mitigating risks and areas of vulnerability, and harnessing opportunities otherwise difficult to convert to benefits. No matter how uncertain the future is, it is the best strategy to actively embrace the trend and make preparations in advance.

oTMS, as a pioneer in the TMS industry, has always insisted on breakthroughs, providing enterprises with advanced technologies and perfect products, escorting enterprises, and allowing enterprises to focus energy and resources on the most strategic and core business, and escorting enterprises.