TMW Aligns With 3Gtms to Add Logistics Offerings
This story appears in the Aug. 25 print edition of Transport Topics.
TMW Systems last week announced an alliance with transportation management software maker 3Gtms to provide a broader set of services to third-party logistics operators and brokers that manage asset-based and non-asset-based freight.
Trimble Navigation, parent of TMW, took a significant minority stake in 3Gtms, David Wangler, president of TMW, told Transport Topics.
Based in Shelton, Connecticut, 3Gtms was created 18 months ago by industry veteran Mitch Weseley.
Wangler said the partnership adds capabilities for Cleveland-based TMW, which historically has focused on services to asset-based carriers, to serve the more complex hybrid model that embraces asset-based and non-asset-based services.
Financial terms of the investment, which entitles TMW to become a reseller of 3Gtms technology, weren’t disclosed.
“What we have seen in the marketplace is an ongoing convergence,” Wangler said, creating the hybrid as some asset-based operators expand into brokerage and non-asset-based operators move to secure adequate asset capacity.
“We concluded that we could get there [to serve the hybrid model] more elegantly and more quickly through the partnership,” Wangler said, because 3Gtms technology fully integrates the planning and execution process.
That step is especially important for the 3PL and broker community, he added, because those businesses need “speed to market.”
That means focusing on faster planning and execution that brokers and 3PLs need to support their customers and trading partners. By contrast, he said, asset-based carriers’ contracts with shippers typically are more focused on the long term.
The companies in a statement said 3Gtms enables users to create cost-saving opportunities that are based on the best method for shipping freight based on its characteristics, instead of just the asset-based carrier’s matching of loads and trucks.
“Together, we’re now able to present a single-source solution to the industry which can enable complex and diversifying transportation service providers to grow their businesses and better address customer needs,” Wangler said.
Other benefits that were identified included the ability for TMW’s current customers to gain more brokerage and 3PL capabilities, while new markets are opened for TMW in those domestic and international markets.
Wangler also said that one target for the new alliance is midsize and smaller firms that may not have the resources to build their own systems.
The TMW official also stressed that the sales forces of the two companies have developed expertise to sell the product because they were brought into the process as the agreement was being fine-tuned.
“Our market visions are in alignment,” Weseley said. “Many logistics companies are broadening their service offerings, blurring the traditional lines between different logistics service provider functions.”
Before creating 3Gtms, Weseley founded or worked with three other TMS firms that eventually were sold to publicly traded companies.
A provision of the investment calls for the addition of Ron Konezny, vice president of global transportation and logistics for Trimble, to 3Gtms’ board.
Konezny founded PeopleNet, which was sold to Trimble three years ago.
Trimble later acquired TMW, as well as ALK Technologies.
