What Are Rate Management Systems (RMS) in the Freight Industry?

Technology has an impact on trucking and freight companies at every level of the operation — including managing freight carrier rates. Innovative Rate Management Systems (RMS) provide a valuable asset to help freight companies better optimize their management of shipping rates, trade tariffs, surcharges, and carrier contracts. Trucking and freight companies that want to improve their bottom line may find that a Rate Management System is a viable option and may want answers to questions like — what are Rate Management Systems in the freight industry?

A Rate Management System (RMS) is a software platform that centralizes financial data for freight companies, making it easy to manage multiple aspects of your shipping rates and other finance elements. With a RMS at your disposal, you will have easy access to key financial data with the ability to manage multiple aspects from a centralized and automated platform. Freight companies that employ an RMS no longer have to rely on complex and confusing financial spreadsheets. 

Here is a better look at how a Rate Management System can benefit your freight company:

Key Benefits of a Rate Management System

• Provides central access to financial and shipping rate data.
• Automates your ability to retrieve key data that includes rate quotes.
• Creates a standardized structure for data that includes shipping rates and currencies.
• Allows you to easily compare rates, transit times, and customer service for carriers.
• Provides real-time visibility of shipping rates and carrier performance.
• Can provide support for freight carriers that ship via land, sea, and air.
• Improves quoting for shipping rates with fast and accurate quotes.
• Provides advanced financial analytics specific to shipping rates and finances.

How Does a TMS Improve Rate Management?

A Rate Management System may be a viable option for your freight company to better manage shipping rates and finances — but it is not the only option for your business. A Transportation Management System (TMS) — like TenTrucks TMS — provides companies with the ability to improve their management of shipping rates with key functions that include automated carrier selection and load optimization.

Here is a better look at how a TMS platform can improve rate management:

Automated Carrier Selection 

Many TMS platforms provide you with the ability to easily and automatically compare rates from multiple freight carriers based on your own set of rules and requirements. This will help you always find the carrier with the best rates. 

Route and Load Optimization

The optimization of your shipping routes and loads is the simplest way to reduce costs and improve your bottom line. TMS platforms provide Less-Than-Truckload load management functions and can optimize shipping routes based on multiple factors like time, distance, and fuel costs. 

Visibility and Analytics

A high-quality TMS will not only provide you with real-time visibility of your trucks and shipments — but will provide you with in-depth access to key analytics with dashboards that show real-time financial data, cost trends, and carrier performance that will help you better manage your shipping rates.

Freight Audits

Are you paying too much for shipping? Are you being overbilled? TMS platforms can provide you with the ability to easily audit freight carrier invoices, catch potential errors early, and avoid overbilling with more accurate financial data.

Rate Shopping

When you are managing your shipping rates, it is important to understand and monitor market rates for different methods of transportation. Transportation Management Systems allow you to dynamically check contract rates against market rates to find the best price.

READ MORE: What Is the ROI for a Transportation Management System? 

You may be asking — what are Rate Management Systems (RMS) in the freight industry? We hope that this overview created by TenTrucks will answer your questions and provide additional information on how a Transportation Management System will help you better manage shipping rates. 

Contact TenTrucks today to schedule a demo of our TenTrucks TMS platform and dispatching services!