Trax’s Transportation Spend Management Implementation Process

With decades of experience under our belt and as the leader in Transportation Spend Management, we at Trax have mastered the implementation process of our solutions and services. We’ve transformed a painful, error-prone process in the industry into a seamless experience for our clients.

Our global expertise and team of seasoned experts means we cover the entirety of your transportation performance, visibility, and spend needs. With over 500 staff strategically located throughout the world in over 120 countries and relationships with over 4,000 carriers, we’ve mastered handling even regional-specific nuances, such as credit notes, government pre-authorizations, and more. 

Our global footprint allows us to process invoices in all of the major languages worldwide and more than 40 currencies. We process invoices on your behalf and provide you with insights from our Total Transportation Spend Management suite of tools.

As we provide our supply chain clients with the best Transportation Spend Management tools and services, it is only fitting that we have a refined implementation process to match. 

Typical Timeframe for Trax Implementation 

Time is money, which is why we help you achieve ROI quickly with our implementation process. Our deployments at Trax have a rollout time ranging from 90 days to quarterly releases throughout a year or more, depending on the complexity and the global scale of your supply chain. Our expertise and implementation process design ensures smooth success for even the most complex large-scale implementations. 

Our work starts before the actual deployment. At the start of the process, Trax holds a two-day workshop to help you prepare vital information, such as your transportation network overview, carrier contracts and rates, cost allocations, accruals, match requirements, and carrier payments and remittance. 

This workshop allows us to give you a rough timeline and checklist of the documentation required for the implementation process. Your teams can then get a head start on preparing the documents and information before official kickoff, which not only speeds up the process but delivers faster ROI. Hence, our deployment before actual deployment. 

Trax's Implementation Rollout

Trax has developed a four-phase implementation process that is tried and tested with some of the world's leading companies in retail, manufacturing, life sciences, technology, and CPG. The four phases of the process are detailed below.

1. Requirements and design

The perfect start to implementation starts with assembling the perfect team. Our implementation teams have the experience-based perspective proactively manage the implementation to ensure your success with staying on-target, avoiding scope creep and delays, obtaining quicker ROI, and remaining within budget—something that 43% of projects struggle to control. Our Trax team has seen and done it all, and we put that expertise in your hands. 

Every deployment has a dedicated deployment project manager, carrier onboarding specialist, technical solution architect, and other critical team members to ensure a smooth transition. Our customer project manager ensures you have one point of contact to streamline communication.

Because our Trax teams have years of experience with implementation for world-leading companies, we know every mistake to avoid, opportunity to take, and next step to make in order to succeed. We’ve honed our best practices that deliver the greatest benefits in terms of ROI, efficiency, success, and carrier satisfaction regardless of your region or industry. 

Once we have introduced you to the team and highlighted their responsibilities, we start collecting information and setting out the plan. Milestone dates, workflows, and contingencies are drafted to ensure successful implementation. 

Once you sign off on the plan, our Trax team collects and runs your data through our system while connecting with your carriers to submit their invoices to us directly, setting up system deployment. As the implementation process gains momentum, we ensure that communication and reporting are up to our world-class standard.

After the kickoff, we keep you in the loop, every step of the way. We hold weekly status meetings to discuss the overall status, including match/inbound file requirements, business rule (BRMS) requirements, outbound feeds, payment files, reporting requirements, and the deployment timeline. 

2. Build and configure

The next stage of our Trax implementation process is building and configuration. We  hold scheduled meetings with subject experts to collect and document more intricate, relevant requirements.

In this stage, our Trax team begins developing automated routines for data feeds and specifications for various carrier protocols. The team also loads files for automated rate compliance audits and builds procedures to generate outbound payment files and data feeds. 

While your documentation and information play a critical role in this stage, we take it a step further. At Trax, we work directly with carriers to build the invoice insert part of freight audit and payment within a process that may include EDI or other electronic file types, or even paper invoices—all based on your needs, as well as your carriers’ needs. When you’re receiving the data that you need, your processes, budget forecasting, and visibility into your supply chain begin to become optimized. 

This stage is fundamental in setting up the optimization of Transportation Spend Management through Trax’s Transportation Spend Management Maturity Model. As Trax's various tools and services—like our Rate Manager, Match Manager, Freight Audit Services, and Carrier Management Services—integrate seamlessly within your supply chain, you build a robust data-collection and operations optimization process. A company that has journeyed through the maturity model has optimized every aspect of its Transportation Spend Management and is primed to turn challenges into opportunities to become a leader in the market.

3. Test and train

Testing is a crucial step of the process. Our Trax team finds and irons out any quirks before the official launch, and gathers reliable data and staff feedback to ensure deployment goes smoothly.

Training is another vital aspect we pay exorbitant attention to, as we want your staff to feel comfortable using the platform when deployment goes live. We conduct extensive and comprehensive functional training sessions, ensuring your staff receive the information and know-how they need prior to launch. 

Once configuration is complete and we prepare to go live, our Trax team schedules daily or semi-weekly meetings to ensure the project's success and that the project is following the plan. 

The Trax team sets up a comprehensive quality assurance process and tests the solution in a standalone test environment. Your teams are introduced to the system’s features and functionalities in an interactive environment prior to go-live in order to simplify and ease the transition period.

This end-to-end testing includes file format and content—both inbound and outbound data—as well as carrier billing formats, audit rating and logic, cost allocation, and other essential features. 

4. Deploy and stabilize 

Once we at Trax have checked and tested that everything is going smoothly, it’s time to go live. After deployment, we maintain daily or semi-weekly meetings to ensure the continuation of on-time carrier payments and maintain a solid launch stabilization period. 

After launch, our Trax team continues to support deployment and offer white-glove service by monitoring and measuring that the objectives have been met successfully, and helping you to continue optimizing your supply chain.

A World-Class Implementation Process

We at Trax have transformed the Transportation Spend Management implementation process. We’ve taken our decades of experience, with deep subject matter knowledge across multiple industries, and created best practices to hone the process. Our team of world-class experts know all the potholes, deadends, and right paths forward for successful implementation that also ensures you meet your requirements and goals. 

Through a combination of best practices, unparalleled expertise, in-depth industry knowledge, and top-tier solutions, we provide you with an expert-designed implementation and a seamless go-live experience. To learn more about our implementation process for your business, contact Trax today.