SaaS — A Great Enabler To Build & Scale Transportation Businesses
Once you add a CRM platform to the SaaS application, you can create a deal pipeline, you can make contacts, you’ll be able to put prospects qualified sales agents, you’d be able to put a proposal, and you’ll be able to put all your customers in.
SaaS (Software as a Service) is a software distribution model in which a cloud provider hosts applications and makes them available to end-users over the Internet.
So traditionally, 10–15 years ago, if I required a server, I had to pay somebody to come in and put that application in my server for me to distribute that application to my employees.
I have converted all my applications into SaaS in the past five years, meaning I’m working on a cloud. I’m paying a subscription to implement that application in my company.
What’s revolutionary about this is that this SaaS application is constantly evolving and improving. And I’m not paying for that improvement. Especially if you throw in Software as a Service Cloud platforms with single sign-on applications, you can control your network and control who’s on that SaaS application without disrupting your network.
SaaS For Transportation
I come from transportation, which is heavy in assets and upfront costs. I have come from traditional trucking and moved into Software as a service based on my industry experience. And about five years ago, I decided to get into Software because I could not find a SaaS application that could meet my multiple modes of domestic transport in one. So, I created my Software with a proprietary SaaS application for my internal trucking company.
We will now look into how SaaS is the way to go no matter what TMS platform you’re operating.
The other exciting thing about SaaS is evaluation. Now, traditional transportation companies work on EBITDA times, maybe five or six. Multiple SaaS applications go five times revenue, which means that if you have 1 million income, it’s five times that multiple of revenue. Traditional trucking companies will only work for five or six times the EBITDA, the net profit multiplied by five. So, if you want to scale a business at a high multiple, SaaS is the way to go because SaaS is growing at revenue, not at EBITDA, which is very interesting.
Businesses have a variety of expenses, from the rent they pay for their factories or offices to the cost of raw materials for their products to the wages they pay their workers to the overall costs of growing their business. For simplifying all these costs, businesses organize them under different categories. Two of the most common are capital expenditures, CAPEX and OPEX (operating expenditures).
For example, suppose you were building your TMS as I created it. In that case, I have capital expenditures of over a million dollars a year in making my own TMS; compared to if I were providing our current TMS platform as SaaS into a subscription, I would charge 99 to $129 for the subscription.
This way, I take advantage of having all that technology for a tiny part of the cost, whereas, in CAPEX, I would have to pay for that developer code. And all those coders currently creating that Software, I would be paying for all those capital expenditures.
Suppose you’re a trucking company, lookout for the best TMS that works best for your business, and pay for that subscription. And I can guarantee you that the SaaS subscription you’re spending every month will evolve and only improve.
SaaS is a great way to build and scale transportation companies
SaaS is a great way to build and scale transportation companies. If you’re a freight broker, a trucking company, or a freight forwarder, find SaaS applications that work best for your business. Incorporate them into your business, build a relationship with that SaaS provider to grow, and find niche new applications within that SaaS application you’re currently working with.
Let us assume that I’m creating value with SaaS for a transportation management system. My essential subscriber will be a trucking company, freight broker, or shipper looking for a back office TMS platform to run their business. The other critical thing in my TMS is integrating with other applications. For example, QuickBooks.
QuickBooks is a great SaaS application, and most small to midsize businesses work on QuickBooks. So why would I want to create something to compete with QuickBooks instead? I want to integrate my TMS with the QuickBooks application and then allow that data to transfer from the TMS into QuickBooks and vice versa.
Thanks to SaaS, domestic trucking, last-mile delivery companies, and container drayage companies can work on one system, one platform.
SaaS & CRM
Once you add a CRM platform to the SaaS application, you can create a deal pipeline, you can make contacts, you’ll be able to put prospects qualified sales agents, you’d be able to put a proposal, and you’ll be able to put all your customers in. And when you win or lose those customers, you’re able to move them along the pipeline. This way, we can provide value to the trucking community, brokers, and freight forwarders and provide a light, easy-to-use, utterly cloud-based CRM that offers the ability to create a deal pipeline.
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