Managed Transportation Services
Managed Transportation Services
Marex’s Managed Transportation Services (MTS) team has two foundational goals, to help you manage your transportation network and reduce your costs. Operating globally and based in the United States, our MTS team has the deep domain expertise to help clients become more efficient, increase visibility and gain better control of their freight activities. All of these provide a tangible return on investment, reducing the landed cost of delivered freight.
What are Managed Transportation Services?
Fully or partially outsourcing transportation to a managed services firm is an effective model for companies wanting to reduce their transportation costs, while maintaining or improving customer service.
A transportation management system (TMS) comprises modern technology that provides visibility and exception management. Managed transportation platforms are built upon the foundations of an effective TMS. MTS and TMS solutions can effectively reduce costs and enhance transportation efficiency and cargo visibility.
Most MTS providers develop these systems in-house. The resulting MTS solution is ineffective without their TMS, causing TMS bias. Such a TMS lacks portability and could leave you with your hands tied. What your business needs is an MTS provider that is proficient in TMS but has no bias toward a particular system.
There are reasons for this:
- TMS platforms vary in functionality, strengths, and weaknesses. One size does not fit all businesses in platform compatibility. Each shipper is unique, so we match the system to the shipper, not the other way around.
- If at some point you decide to move your transportation management in-house or find a new MTS provider, with an unbiased TMS / MTS relationship, all you have to do is change your user ID and password and follow the standard operating procedures (SOPs) which were developed custom to your operation.
Technology-enabled versus technology dependent
Technology is at the forefront of our MTS practice, but we are not dependent on our own system. Our MTS practice is adaptable to all scenarios – we will use your current system, we will recommend and procure a system for you, or we will help you optimize and improve your system by managing further development and/or integration of disparate systems. In this respect, we are agnostic.
Tried and Proven – We are experts in technology and transportation management. We drive the process of co-creating SOPs which outline the framework that we will execute on your behalf. We ensure full alignment with your operation and establish a measurable scorecard against which you can grade our performance.
The key differentiator at Marex, the reason we stand out from our competitors, is that we don’t promote a particular TMS to complement our MTS service. Instead, we implement our proprietary 4Di process that is to discover, design, develop, deploy, and improve a tech-enabled MTS program tailored to your requirements.
- Discover – We analyze your current process from order generation to vendor settlement. This includes deep supply chain discovery and end-to-end analysis of your current state, focusing on your transportation process and existing systems. This discovery phase is critical for alignment with your process and meeting you where you are now. We have delivered tangible results using a “crawl-walk-run” approach to move from the current state.
- Design – Next, we identify, quantify, and prioritize the gaps and co-design custom Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to fit your business. The goal of this phase is to ensure the transportation management solutions and systems align with your future state.
- Develop – We then finalize the development of the MTS and TMS plan with our managed transportation team and the TMS technology provider. This stage is focused on pre-deployment activities, leveraging best practices we’ve learned in our decades of agile supply chain program development.
- Deploy– We implement and deploy the tailor-made technology-enabled MTS program. The delivery phase is critical to the adoption and success of the project. We take an active, hands-on approach to customized implementation and thorough training of all participating parties.
- Improve – Finally, we focus on continuous improvement measures at a regular cadence. In most cases, this takes the form of monthly or quarterly reviews where we use performance data to score, rank and grade the operations. This includes regular reviews of vendors’ adherence to the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) from the design phase.
Since 2011, Marex has provided technology-enabled transportation management services to shippers with freight spends ranging from less than $5 million to over $500 million. With expertise in the industrial, construction, energy, retail, food and beverage, and aerospace/defense/humanitarian sectors, our logistics professionals perform as an extension of your business when they lead a project.
We help you gain control over your transportation network and deliver efficiencies that optimize your supply chain, reducing the total landed cost of your freight.
Quality vs. Quantity
We are a boutique-managed transportation service provider with a focus on being the best rather than the biggest. We leverage our decades of experience as a 3PL and asset owner, to design, build and implement a transportation management solution tailored to your business.
Technology Savvy
Our MTS team understands transportation technology. We have designed, developed, and implemented multiple transportation and logistics automation software products. We are firm believers in software’s efficiency when coupled with actively managed transportation.
We have deep domain expertise using technology to streamline and improve transportation operations. While we have built proprietary systems in the past, our model is to partner with technology providers and match the system to the shipper instead of the shipper to the system.
