Touchless Transport Management

What is “touchless transport management”? How can you achieve it and what can you gain? The possibility of streamlining transportation management increases as more and more partners in the logistics chain become interconnected. Smart applications can translate instructions from humans to program code and apply it to a large pool of available data. Operations can then be carried out seamlessly and automatically.

In which areas can you create touchless transport management? Let's look at a customer order and follow its path from completed picking assignment to completed accounting.

Touchless planning

Step one would be to automatically consolidate our order together with a number of other orders in order to bring down the per-unit shipping cost. The unique customer order might be shipped in several legs, and consolidated together with different orders on each transport leg.

Touchless execution

The next step is booking and printing out documents. Here the system can select carriers and services automatically, as well as send an electronic message confirming the booking. The document is printed immediately, so the only thing the user needs to do is to paste the label on the package!

Touchless tracking

After consolidation and execution comes transport tracking. Based on status messages from the carrier, the recipient can automatically be notified of any deviations, and be able to track the shipment using a web tracking link.

Touchless auditing

Invoice checking and auditing is a step where many companies wrestle with heavy administration, often leading to random sampling or no checking and verification at all. By bringing in the EDI invoice and letting a TMS system perform automatic invoice checking and sort out deviations, 100% of transport invoices can be checked with minimal effort.

Touchless allocation

Now the real cost of the delivery is confirmed and because we know which customer orders are included in the delivery, the system can calculate how much of the cost should be allocated to our orders. Accounting codes are then assigned to the amount using built-in logic and entered directly into the accounting system.

To sum up this example, we have consolidated and booked orders, printed shipping documents, tracked shipments, checked invoices, allocated transport costs and booked those costs. The only thing the user had to do was to pick the goods for shipment using an ERP/WMS system, paste a label and respond to any billing error!

Besides the obvious advantage in freeing up time, automation leads to fewer errors caused by human errors, as well as improved data quality. Costs are reduced, partly because shipments are booked with the right carrier, but also through reduced billing errors.

Data integration and the right software thus enable seamless and touchless operations. Touchless transport management, according to my definition, means automating and eliminating manual tasks, while creating better quality, control and visibility!

Karl-Johan Kjerstadius
Project manager
karl-johan.kjerstadius@primelog.com