Trimble’s acquisition of Europe’s Transporeon in 2022 has yielded another expanded product offering for the company: a TMS aimed specifically at U.S. shippers.
The product’s name is simple: Trimble TMS for Shippers. It follows on the launch last year of Trimble’s Freight Marketplace, a loadboard-like offering for shippers that also was built on the capabilities of Transporeon.
When Trimble bought Transporeon in 2022 for just under $2 billion, Transporeon CEO Stephan Siebert said at the time that what had been “missing for Transporeon as a stand-alone entity” was a “large carrier network in the United States.”
But two of the biggest initiatives coming out of the acquisition so far have been mostly on the shipper side: TMS for Shippers and Freight Marketplace.
Bringing two sides together
“It’s actually a convergence of both ecosystems, the Transporeon platform and Trimble’s TMS platform,” Chad Greene, sales engineering manager at Trimble, said in an interview with FreightWaves.
That “convergence” is enabling various Trimble capabilities into the new product, such as CoPilot and the PC*Miler route planner.
Greene, who came over to Trimble (NASDAQ: TRMB) in the Transporeon acquisition, said the shipper TMS can integrate with the network of carriers using other Trimble products, including its existing carrier-focused TMS system.
Rather than just one product for shippers that is only offered as a unified TMS from beginning to end, the company described TMS for Shippers as an “agile, AI-integrated transportation management system that combines automation and real-time visibility in one core bundle,” according to a prepared statement released in conjunction with the recent launch.
What can be sold to customers, Trimble said, is something akin to a cafeteria-like offering. Shippers can choose which features need to be acquired and bolted on to their existing TMS system in stages up to and including a full product, if that is the route they choose to go.
Greene said Transporeon’s European shipper TMS product did have customers in the U.S. when the company was acquired by Trimble.
But as the Transporeon acquisition has been integrated into the wider Trimble array of products, the capabilities that Greene said existed with Trimble’s TMS offerings for carriers and brokers in the U.S. have enabled the rollout of a full TMS aimed at shippers, he added.
“It’s taking the best of both worlds and bringing them together in a common platform,” Greene said.
Separating from the pack
A TMS provider trying to distinguish themselves in a crowded field of other providers, Greene acknowledged, has a challenging road to accomplish that goal.
Greene said the new product is not just for shippers and can be modified to serve 3PLs. He gave the example of a broker with its own fleet. The “bolt on” capabilities of TMS for Shippers opens the door for a brokerage’s existing TMS to be supplemented with various features from the new Trimble product.
The key selling point that Trimble will take in offering its shipper TMS product is its “modular aspect,” Greene said.
He spoke after a recent visit to the Houston area where he met with potential oil and gas clients, who might become customers but without reinventing the wheel.
“They would say, we’re not going to rip out our TMS, it’s way too expensive and it’s way too time-consuming,” Greene said. But it is possible and easier, he added, to “spin up a new modular TMS, where maybe I only need freight procurement on it. Or maybe I just need to simply do rate management and carrier tendering.”
The desired specific functionality can be stitched together piecemeal, Greene said, “and you only pay for what you need. So you get a lower cost of entry, but you get more of a predictable type of commercial model that you can use to grow and scale your business.”
The strategy, he added, is to “sort of coexist with other TMS’s.”
It’s an “a la carte” offering, Greene said, but it doesn’t exist alone. Trimble does have partnerships with other TMS providers where the partner company will provide a certain base line of services, and Trimble can add its services on top of that.
“It provides an achievable and clear ROI when they do that,” Greene said.
Among the add-on features that Greene said might be “number one” would be “our all in one procurement bundle” to help a shipper procure freight.
“We offer strategic procurement,” Greene said. The tool enables companies to put out annual bids, or possibly more, and the Freight Marketplace can be part of the procurement tool available to users of the TMS for Shippers.
Greene also said Trimble offers real-time visibility as part of the bundle. “If you have a TMS, that should already be built in” he said.
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