Gartner defines last-mile delivery (LMD) technology solutions as specialized, customer-centric transportation management solutions that focus on managing the delivery process by which a consumer and the products they order come together. These solutions provide capabilities for routing deliveries to consumer homes, with some solutions extending the delivery service capabilities offered to support options like store, curbside and locker box pickup as well as return options. LMD technology solutions provide a digitized experience to a shipper’s customer, allowing end consumers to route, book, track and communicate changes to their orders through a digital channel. LMD solutions can support different shipping models as they incorporate vehicle routing, visibility and optimization capabilities for asset-based shippers, those that own last-mile delivery and associated vehicles, and access to a carrier network for non-asset-based shippers.
Gartner defines transportation management systems (TMSs) as software that supports multimodal planning and execution of the physical transport of goods across the supply chain. It allows a company to manage varying levels of transportation complexity across multiple transport modes and geographic regions. TMS solutions are utilized by companies of differing sizes, operational complexity, industries and geographic locations. TMS solutions are utilized to plan and execute the physical transport of goods across the supply chain. They provide a company with the ability to manage the entire transportation life cycle of an order or shipment. This includes: 1. Sourcing and procuring transportation capacity from third-party companies by supporting bid management and optimization. Intaking orders to provide a shipment plan, including order and shipment consolidation, mode selection, routes, and carrier selection. 2. Taking the shipment plan and enabling communications with carriers to facilitate execution against the plan. 3. Tracking and tracing the movements of shipments from pickup to final delivery. 4. Matching expected transportation charges against actual charges to manage discrepancies. 5. Making better transportation decisions by utilizing embedded analytics and reporting capabilities to measure key performance indicators, such as on-time performance, emissions calculations, and costs by customer, product line and location. TMS solutions enable a company to have tighter control of their transportation operations, optimize costs, improve efficiencies, and have improved visibility into the movement of goods.
Solutions for vehicle routing and scheduling are specialized transportation applications aimed at organizations that directly (e.g., private/dedicated fleet) or indirectly (e.g., contract fleet, crowdsourced fleets) manage shipping assets and resources. These tools are used to develop route plans that meet the delivery objectives at minimal cost and mileage based on the company’s parameters (such as from orders), rules, and constraints. The aim is to minimize transportation costs while satisfying feasibility constraints as to when and where stops are made, what can be loaded in each vehicle, and what routes drivers can serve. More recently, companies are looking at optimizing these routes for sustainability and using alternative fuel fleets to minimize greenhouse gas emissions. These vehicle routing and scheduling solutions may have capabilities to optimize vehicles, trucks, and/or last-mile movements. Most have the ability to take into consideration maximum hours of service guidelines a commercial driver can drive or work. The solutions can create optimized static territorial routes or be used to create more dynamic, real-time optimal routing decisions.