Indonesian tech startup Transporta is rolling out its new free transport management system (TMS) to help small business truckers, a press release says.
The TMS will aim to let logistics providers handle the entirety of the order management and delivery fulfillment cycle, and will work from a single cloud platform.
There will also be free trips offered to small and medium-sized business (SMB) truckers.
The idea is to take the mostly-manual process for smaller trucking companies and work to streamline it all on one cloud platform, with improvements to make it so smaller businesses can afford the costs of a TMS offering, which is usually much more expensive.
That will include everything from submitting bids, managing orders, scheduling routes, assigning drivers, tracking deliveries and invoicing clients.
Emma Hartono, chief operating officer of Transporta, said, “Today, the vast majority of Indonesia’s SME truckers are using basic ERP systems whilst communicating with clients, drivers, and suppliers on separate messaging apps. Not only is this onerous and time-consuming, but the massive inefficiencies often result in idle trucks, half-empty hauls, and worst of all, late deliveries and unhappy customers.”
The cost savings from having TMS could be anywhere from 5 to 15 percent, the press release notes. That might not be enough to convince a trucker to go digital, and buyers often have to pay up front and have additional costs for things like setup, maintenance, hardware and staff training.
Transporta’s TMS adds an element of self-onboarding, with an asset-light web-based solution and a seamless way to integrate with WhatsApp and other applications.
In other news involving truckers, KeepTruckin, the fleet management company, has raised $190 million in a funding round.
See more: Fleet Management Tech KeepTruckin Hauls In $190 Million For Expansion
KeepTruckin, which works with AI-based tech in an attempt to help with video-based driver safety, GPS tracking, electronic logging device (ELD) tracking, fuel spend management and other such things, plans to keep supporting AI products.