If you think days and weeks of transportation management system software training is just a painful reality, just part of implementing a new TMS, then take that idea…
Ball it up tightly.
And toss it out the window.
The entire point of a transportation management system (TMS) is to make your life easier — to simplify tasks for your entire organization. To make you a lean, mean, shipping machine.
And yet, so many TMS vendors recommend days, or even weeks, of training to get your staff ready to use their software.
There’s something ironic about that.
Transportation management system training should be minimal
Your business is built on margins, margins that are often slim. High productivity and high efficiency is the name of the game. A TMS isn’t just a perk like it used to be — it’s a critical component of your business.
A lot of people like to say, “time is money,” but nowhere is that truer than in your business.
You don’t switch your entire company over to a new TMS because you want to lose even more time to training.
The truth is, many modern transportation management systems suffer from feature bloat — they do more than they need to do, they have far more functions than anyone could possibly need, and even if you’re the kind of person who loves infinite functionality in your software, it’s doubtful that your employees will ever learn all the features.
And do you really feel like paying them to become experts in a proprietary system that you might not have 10 years from now (or that looks so different in 10 years they might as well start their training over)?
Do you have time for that? Do you have money for that?
Didn’t think so.
When it comes to Transportation Management Systems, simpler is better
Because the simpler it is, the less training you need.
Perhaps more specifically, the less training your employees need.
Nothing can be quite as terrifying to an employee, an employee who’s spent years using a handful of tools, who knows those tools inside and out, and who understands the importance of efficiency and productivity in your business, nothing can be quite so terrifying to them as telling them they have to learn an entirely new system.
Employee resistance can be a huge hurdle when it comes to implementing new systems. They may start to worry about their ability to do their jobs in the future.
Telling them that they’ll need a week of training doesn’t relieve that anxiety — it compounds it.
Which is why simpler is better — we’ve worked rigorously to make our interface on Brokerware™ as straightforward and user-friendly as possible, but we know that’s not always the case with other transportation management systems. Some of our competitors have long, complicated, involved training sessions.
We can explain many of the core features of our system through a handful of 1-2 minute training videos.
But this is an issue that goes beyond wasted time and wasted hours. There’s another issue at stake.
You shouldn’t have to pay for Transportation Management System training — but many companies require exactly that
Most transportation management system training isn’t free — in fact, many of these overly complex systems separate training completely from the software itself. You purchase the software, only to learn that training costs extra.
Or, they provide free “training” along with your TMS that’s really nothing more than an introduction to the software — and not nearly enough for your employees to be able to use it effectively.
Some of these companies don’t even provide training at all.
Something about that just doesn’t seem right.
To add to the insanity, many 3rd party training programs have taken advantage of this training gap. They charge you to teach end users (your employees) how to use software that you’re already paying for, often costing as much as (or more than) the software itself.
The truth is, complex systems aren’t as difficult to create as their creators would like you to think. What’s really difficult is creating a complex system and then boiling it down to essentials. Creating a system that does everything you need it to do, increasing efficiency, increasing productivity, while also being intuitive.
There are a handful of transportation management systems out there that achieve this goal.
We like to think we’re one of them.
A simple transportation management system means you and your team can use it immediately (and scale use over time)
Businesses thrive on growth. Onboarding new employees can be an exciting and frightening prospect, all at the same time.
You don’t want to have to pay for TMS training for every new employee you bring onboard.
By the same token, you don’t want to have to waste the time of an established employee on training the new hires to use the software.
Your business is supported by volume — and the more time and manhours you can devote to activities directly related to revenue, the more profitable your business becomes.
By reducing training as much as possible, by increasing the efficiency of the onboarding process, by giving your new employees a simple system to use that they can learn quickly, you not only make your business more profitable in the long run, you also make your employees happier.
Having to learn a new piece of complicated software is scary.
Having to learn a simple piece of software isn’t.
Which means you can scale, easily, without having to worrying about training and onboarding getting in the way of growth.
Changing your TMS doesn’t have to keep you awake at night
Changing your transportation management software used to be complicated, time consuming, and a massive headache. But no more.
With Brokerware™, you get a simple, cloud-based transportation management system, an all-in-one solution that’s complex enough to handle all your needs while still simple enough for any of your employees to pick up in a matter of days.
And, depending on your specific needs, we can often get your system up and running for you in as little as one day.
We even include the initial training, such that is needed, with your initial setup. We do charge a little extra for additional training later on down the road – but chances are, your current employees can show your new ones the ropes in less than an hour.
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