DEDHAM, Mass.--The Transportation Management Systems (TMS) market grew to over $989 million in 2005. TMS sales to Logistics Service Providers (LSP) grew by over 11 percent last year, significantly outpacing sales growth to manufacturers and retailers.

According to Adrian Gonzalez, Director of ARC’s Logistics Executive Council and author of the new study, Transportation Management Systems Worldwide Outlook (www.arcweb.com/res/tms), “While you can’t place too much significance on year-over-year results, the data, nonetheless, suggests that Logistics Service Providers are finally beginning to take a strategic view of their IT requirements and infrastructure. The success of TMS in the LSP sector last year was enabled by the fact that vendors are adding LSP-specific functionality, such as freight forwarding capabilities, to their solutions.”

ARC is forecasting the market to exceed $1.3 billion by 2010, representing a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.9%.

TMS Value Extends Across the Enterprise and Value Chain

The shift towards Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) is facilitating this trend. The scope and value proposition of a TMS is extending beyond the transportation department to other groups within the enterprise, and even to customers and partners. In the past, access to a TMS was usually limited to a handful of people within a company, but now hundreds or even thousands of users can log in to a TMS to execute processes or access information, depending on their role and access privileges. Gonzalez comments, “TMS is migrating away from being a standalone, monolithic application used by only a handful of transportation users to a platform where users across the value chain can execute role-specific, transportation-related business processes via configurable user interfaces, workflows, and web services.“

Other key trends discussed in the study include:

• Transportation Spend Management gaining importance
• Continued growth of On Demand deployment and pricing
• Emergence of Managed Transportation Services
• Shift from Parcel Shipping to Total Package Management
• Inbound transportation remaining a priority
• Better visibility of drivers and mobile assets

The study also includes market shares and forecasts by solution type, geographic region, customer tier, and vertical industry.

Founded in 1986, ARC Advisory Group has grown to become the Thought Leader in Manufacturing and Supply Chain solutions. No matter how complex your business issues, our analysts have the expert industry knowledge and first-hand experience to help you find the best answer. We focus on simple yet critical goals: improving your return on assets, operational performance, total cost of ownership, project time-to-benefit, and shareholder value. Further information can be obtained from ARC, Three Allied Drive, Dedham, MA 02026, 781-471-1000, Fax 781-471-1100, E-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , Web www.arcweb.com.