The Reason Logistics and Supply Chain Companies are Opting for SAP TM

Challenging market situations, unexpected changes in transport costs, and bottlenecks in international transport, coupled with thin margins, put a lot of pressure on the transport sector. Companies that work in or facilitate transport (logistics) face similar challenges. Many companies can no longer work with the transport management systems they used in the past. Older systems often cannot be integrated with one another, let alone with the IT systems of other involved parties. As a result, transport planning and execution remain labor-intensive and time-consuming.

More and more companies invest in SAP TM to modernize their transport management. SAP TM helps integrate and automate the transportation management processes within SAP.

Key Points Driving the Adoption of SAP TM

Because of stricter environmental laws and increasing transport rates, the demands on the logistics sector are rising. legacy transportation systems focus only on transport execution and do not provide visibility from order creation in the warehouse through to last mile transport.

Traditional systems require a high degree of manual intervention. There is little, if any, automation, and visibility for operational stakeholders is virtually non-existent and planning and order execution is highly error-prone.

SAP TM can provide integrated planning, inventory control, order and execution management; This, in turn, allows for automation of processes, end-to-end real time transport execution and automation of settlement transactions.

Integrating freight forwarding services gives logistics companies complete control over all modes of transport including road, air and rail.

The primary motivators for purchasing enterprise software are improved core business drivers (cost, speed and service) and financial results. Leading logistics companies adopting SAP TM improved bottom line results through improved operational and financial process efficiencies.

One of the primary benefits of SAP TM is optimized routing. The Vehicle Scheduling and Routing (VSR) optimizer automatically generates vehicle schedules considering thousands of constraints to minimize total cost.

Additional benefits of using SAP TM to generate freight orders include:

• 3D load building to maximize trailer loads and consolidate stops
• Automated evaluation of thousands of carriers to select the best carrier to tender the freight

Additional benefits of using SAP TM to automate freight billing and settlement include:

• Automated freight charge calculation based on route, loads and contract rates
• Automated posting of verified goods receipts to the general ledger
• Handles rates, fuel surcharges, volume and dimensional freight rules and agreements.
• Related to the Finance and Commercial (FI-CO) modules of SAP, it generates Freight Settlement Documents (FSDs) and automatically validates invoices (MIRO).
• Supports self-invoicing and dispute processing.
• It provides real time transportation visibility via the SAP Business Network.
• Logistics dispatchers receive automated alerts for estimated time of arrival and wall-to-wall driver visibility.
• Exception based routing enables proactive customer communication to manage expectations for on time delivery.

This detailed comparison includes aspects of both TM solutions (Embedded and Standalone) and the legacy ECC TM solution.

Aspect	Basic Embedded TM	Advanced Embedded and Standalone TM
Target Deployment	Support for simple transport orders and shipments	Support for optimization of global transport networks
Planning Activities	Requires manual planning	Offers load building and VSR optimizations
Tendering and Dispatching	Supports simple tendering processes and dispatching activities	Support for higher level tendering and dispatching processes
Freight Settlement	Provides support for freight settlement	Provides support for freight settlement, plus settlement of complex agreements
Support Status	Considered legacy	Actively being supported and enhanced
Migration Path	Direct migration path for simple standard transport requirements	Support for global optimization of complex, high volume transport requirement

Integration with SAP MM allows us to automate the inbound procure-to-pay process by transforming purchase orders into transport orders and factoring vendor-provided freight into item value.

Integration with SAP EWM provides the ability to automatically integrate the warehouse management system (WMS) to plan and direct yard and loading activities based on scheduled transportation events, thereby reducing dock appointments wait time.

Architectural Design Considerations

Architectural design consideration and configuration of master data are key to the successful implementation of SAP TM. These include:

• Mapping of Company Codes to TM business partners.
• Defining transportation lanes and connecting transportation zones.
• Setting up transportation units and identifying freight incompatibilities.
• Integration of SAP TM with the core ERP system via the Odata and CIF integration frameworks.

It's a great time to join the workforce to address the existing gap in talent needed to implement SAP TM. Many companies are moving from other vendor solutions or from the LE-TRA module to implement SAP S/4HANA. The combination of SAP implementation and logistics domain experience is a scarce commodity.

With the shift to SAP S/4HANA, a functional specialist with a strong integration focus (instead of deep process domain expertise) is key for the success of a SAP TM implementation.

A career change into SAP TM from SAP SD, SAP MM, and LE-TRA modules is highly rewarding and positive in the following ways:

• Positive Impact on Salary: Experts in SAP TM modules are billing and salary level 1 modules and, therefore, get a high premium in comparison to other legacies modules.
• Favorable Market Conditions: It is projected that a large number of enterprises will migrate from their legacy systems to SAP TM, ensuring an abundance of available projects.
• Importance in Solution Architecture: Integrating TM and SD modules along with EWM, enables consultants to design and implement end-to-end business process transformations on a global scale.

There is a rapidly increasing need for SAP TM module experts and Best Online Career understands this. Hence, w have designed a course that it guarantees will give learners hands-on training on SAP TM and will boost their careers.

You will have complete access to real SAP systems where you can configure steps shown to you by our trainers.

Real world projects are based on various business scenarios including Order Management and Freight Settlement and integration to S/4HANA.

Our trainers are experienced SAP Consultants. Along with training, they will provide you career and employment assistance including help with resume development and preparation for job interviews.