What to Know When Integrating a YMS with a WMS, TMS, ERP, or Other Enterprise Systems

Yard management systems provide significant benefits to a yard’s operations, including visibility, labor efficiency, improved order fulfillment rates, and reduced costs/fees. However, there is always room for improvement like taking the next step and integrating your yard management systems with other key business systems to really get aligned and make a deeper impact on your overall supply chain operations. Let’s discuss what happens when a YMS solution is integrated with other enterprise systems, the importance of yard management software integration, plus various features and benefits. Finally, we’ll showcase our yard management software and how it can integrate with any system, or be deployed and used as a standalone YMS solution depending on what you can achieve in phase 1, and work towards in the future.

With today’s modern systems, often delivered via a SAAS model, integration between systems can be easy and quick to implement. SAAS means “Software as a Service” and this type of software is available to you on the web from a browser, and delivered to you via the cloud. Cloud-based software allows users access to software applications that run on shared computing resources from a centralized server location. Now let’s get into software integration and what you need to know to have success.

Things to Consider When Integrating Any Software

Before integrating any new software, including a YMS solution with any other pre-existing software, it is important to:

• Understand your operational processes and knowing what is important to each department.
• Identify all software systems and understanding what data could be helpful if shared.
• Define objectives of all related departments and seeing where there may be gaps in information and opportunity to improve through data sharing or automation.
• Know your existing software integrations that are already in place.
• Assign a team to gather all of the information above and who will be responsible to see the project through.

When you determine that a software integration is needed to improve business processes, it is important to consider:

• The systems that will share data and information.
• The type of data that will be shared.
• How the data will be shared.
• The format or protocol for sharing the data –for example through APIs, or flat files, etc.
• The frequency at which data is shared and if it will be triggered by an action, on an interval, or some other approach.

What to Know About YMS Integration with WMS, TMS, ERP, & Other Enterprise Systems

To have your yard management system work optimally, it must have certain capabilities that will allow it to integrate with other solutions. When integrated with other key business systems, it can enhance real-time information that is critical to making the best business decisions and may completely automate workflows. Some examples of systems that are integrated with YMS solutions are Warehouse Management Systems (WMS), Transportation Management Systems (TMS), and Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP), each of which may be an integral piece of your organization’s software business tools.  

A Warehouse Management System (WMS) as defined by Gartner, is a software application that helps manage and intelligently execute the operations of a warehouse, distribution center, or fulfillment center. WMS applications offer capabilities such as receiving, put-away, stock locating, inventory management, cycle counting, task interleaving, wave planning, order allocation, order picking, replenishment, packing, shipping, labor management, yard management, and automated materials handling equipment interfaces.

A Transportation Management System (TMS), as defined by Gartner, is used to plan freight movements, do freight rating and shopping across all modes, select the appropriate route and carrier, and manage freight bills and payments.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), defined by Gartner, as the ability to deliver an integrated suite of business applications. ERP tools share a common process and data model, covering broad and deep operational end-to-end processes, such as those found in finance, HR, distribution, manufacturing, service, and the supply chain. ERP applications automate and support a range of administrative and operational business processes across multiple industries, including line of business, customer-facing, administrative and the asset management aspects of an enterprise. ERP deployments are complex and expensive endeavors, and some organizations struggle to define the business benefits.

When considering a software integration, look for business benefits in four areas:

1. A catalyst for business innovation.
2. A platform for business process efficiency.
3. A vehicle for process standardization.
4. IT cost savings.

Most enterprises focus on the last two areas, because they are the easiest to quantify; however, the first two areas often have the most significant impact on the enterprise.

Why Integrate Yard Management Software with Other Enterprise Systems?

With comprehensive data at your fingertips, your yard management system will serve as an integral source for centralized analysis and monitoring. A quick list of some top YMS integration benefits include:

1. Greater visibility to information before it arrives, to help with decisions while on the yard, and for planning on the outbound side.
2. Removing of double data entry.
3. No more errors in transferring of data from one system to another
4. Saving time.
5. Automation. Systems can trigger actions and events in other systems, removing the need for human interaction.
6. Faster processing of repetitive tasks.
7. Proactive instead of reactive decision making.
8. Greatly improve operational efficiencies.
9. Boost information accuracy.
10. Detailed reporting metrics with more in-depth, timely and accurate information.

Integration allows systems to work together as a complete, cohesive unit. Your data isn’t siloed. You don’t have to analyze separate sets of data to determine how effective your operation is at any given time. And best of all, with today’s modern software systems it is easy to integrate them and gain the benefits quickly.

YardView Yard Management Software Can Integrate with All Systems or Operate as a Standalone Solution

Leading the industry for over 20 years, YardView is recognized as the industry’s best yard management software. The best part about our software is that whether you’re looking to integrate your new YMS system or you’re looking for a standalone YMS solution, YardView works with either approach based on your specific needs, resource availability, vision, and opportunities.

Our yard management software has exclusive benefits and solutions such as:

• Improved visibility
• Reduced detention/demurrage fees
• Improved trailer spotting
• Enhanced yard driver communication and productivity
• 24/7 cloud-based access and support
• Easy to adopt and install resources
• And many more!