Know thyself - and thy software

Perhaps the most famous maxim of the oracle at Delphi is “Know thyself”. The underlying message is that many people overestimate their capabilities if they don’t “know themselves”, and make fools of themselves in the process. Let’s take this classic reference and make an analogy using the mundane business of enterprise software and transportation management systems.

As a buyer of enterprise software, you need to see beyond what the vendor says, since a lot of marketing material is traditionally spun out with very little basis in real capabilities. Conversely, to be credible, vendors must know their limits and keep to a narrow path in marketing language, projecting an attractive yet accurate image.

How to categorize software systems

Most enterprise software systems come about and develop as a response to specific customers’ needs, and it is only after several release cycles that they mature into something that falls into a market category, as interpreted by the oracles of our time, the industry analysts. After all, similar companies in similar geographies and similar industries are looking for solutions to similar problems. So when suppliers come up with solutions that have a similar scope and functionality, voilà – we have a category.

Primelog is no exception; our product has developed over time into something that solves a great many, highly diverse business problems in the area of transportation. How would we characterize it? First, Primelog LMS is a global solution because our customers use it globally across transportation modes and with a variety of logistics service providers. Second, Primelog LMS has deep functionality around the financial aspects of transportation management, which is natural since our customers buy (and sometimes sell) transportation services. Third, Primelog LMS has strong analytical capabilities because our customers are large and have complex distribution networks spawning large amounts of data that outgrew the spreadsheet phase long ago.

The Gartner Group definition

So, if you are producing enterprise software and you “know yourself” – meaning you realize that you are not the only one in the world in your category – you can probably find a suitable label for your product after a bit of a struggle. You might start developing something based on your vision (Primelog's was logistics), but then you get paying customers who pull you into something that suits their needs. Our product, Primelog LMS, has evolved into what analysts call a transportation management system (TMS) . In terms of deployment model, it is a Software as a Service (SaaS) TMS. Digging down deeper, it is a SaaS TMS tuned to the needs of global shippers with multi-modal transportation networks. The biggest oracle of our market, Gartner Group, has defined this specific sub-category as “Holistic Multimodal TMS”.

Gartner Group define TMS as follows:
"A TMS (transportation management system) is used to plan freight movements, do freight rating and shopping across all modes, select the appropriate route and carrier, and manage freight bills and payments."

But wasn’t the point of the maxim “know thyself” about knowing where your limits are? Of course Primelog has its limits, since our focus is on shippers, not fleet owners. And while we strive to deliver a TMS suite that is as complete as possible, our TMS functionality is especially well suited for those who buy (and sometimes sell) transportation, rather than for those who produce transportation services at the asset level. There are also TMS areas where we rely on partner solutions to fill out the entire scope, for example in the area of strategic planning and network design.

TMS deserves more attention and I intend to follow up this post later to elaborate more about what constitutes a good TMS suite. If you’re just joining this dialog, I suggest you read my earlier blog post on why SaaS is the obvious choice of deployment model for TMS. You might also enjoy the earlier post on the height, breadth and depth of a SaaS TMS.

Magnus Molin
R & D Director
magnus.molin@primelog.com