SAP TM Experts Who Solve Real Transportation Problems

Your SAP TM is live. You paid for it. But your planners still work in Excel, freight costs keep going up, and the same problems come back every month.

Here is the thing. The SAP TM system is often not the root cause.

Over the years, things change. New customers, new routes, new products. But the settings inside SAP TM usually stay the same. Master data gets messy. People find shortcuts & those shortcuts become the normal way of working. Slowly, the system and the business stop matching each other.

That is where most SAP TM problems come from. And that is what we fix.

Is Your SAP TM Showing These Warning Signs?

• Planners change almost every plan the system creates
• Orders going to the same place on the same day leave on two different trucks
• Your team plans in Excel first, then enters it into SAP
• Someone has to call the warehouse to check if a shipment moved
• Freight invoices need checking before you can pay them
• The same problem comes back after every fix
• Nobody remembers why a rule was set up that way

Tick three or more? Then you probably do not have one big problem. You have several small ones sitting on top of each other.

Why Are Freight Units Not Consolidating Correctly?

What you see: Two orders. Same city, same day. They should share a truck. Instead they go separately, and both trucks are half empty.

Why this happens:

• The rules that decide which orders can travel together are too strict. Two orders get separated because of a small mismatch, like a different incoterm or shipping condition, even though they could easily fit in the same truck.
• The planning horizon or selection criteria leave one of the orders out, so the optimizer never looks at both orders together.
• Transportation lanes do not match how goods really move, so the system does not find a valid shared route.
• Only weight is being considered, when volume or other capacity limits matter just as much. The system fills by weight and leaves space empty.
• Small gaps in customer or product master data quietly block orders from grouping.

What we do: We take one order and follow it step by step. From the moment the freight unit is created, through the grouping rules, into the planning run. Somewhere along that path the order stops being eligible for grouping. We find that exact step.

What it costs you: Every extra truck is a full freight charge, an extra booking, extra paperwork, and one more thing your planner has to manage.

Why Are Planners Still Doing Manual Planning?

What you see: SAP TM creates a plan. The planner looks at it, ignores it & builds a better one in Excel.

When this happens, it usually means planning strategies, optimizer settings, constraints or automation rules no longer match how the business actually runs. The system produces plans that feel wrong to an experienced planner, so people stop trusting it and go back to spreadsheets.

Why this happens:

• Planning rules were set during the project and never updated, even though volumes, lanes and customers have changed since
• Optimizer settings are either too rigid or too loose, so results look strange to someone who knows the network
• Real limits were never put into the system, like dock timings, customer delivery windows, or driver hours
• Master data behind the planning decision is incomplete, so the system is working with a partial picture
• Planners were taught which buttons to click, but never why the system makes the choices it makes
• Custom developments changed the planning behaviour, and nobody documented why

What we do: We take the same set of orders and compare what the system decided with what your planner decided. Where they disagree, we find out who is right. Sometimes the planner is right and the rule needs changing. Sometimes the system is right and the planner just needs to see why.

What it costs you: Your most experienced people spend the day doing data entry instead of managing carriers and handling exceptions. And every plan built outside the system is a plan nobody can report on.

Why Are SAP TM and SAP EWM Not Staying in Sync?

What you see: A shipment is planned in TM, but the warehouse cannot see it. Or the warehouse ships it and TM still shows it as open. So someone picks up the phone to check.

Why this happens:

• Master data does not match on both sides. Locations, packaging materials or business partners are maintained differently in each system.
• Deliveries and freight orders are created at different times, so one system runs ahead of the other
• Error handling was never set up properly, so failed messages sit in a queue that nobody watches
• The connection was tested with clean data during the project, but never with the messy real cases

What we do: We go straight to the handover points. Where TM hands over to ERP, and where ERP hands over to EWM. That is where the status stops moving. Usually it is one message type or one field, not the whole connection.

What it costs you: Manual checking, delayed dispatches, and two teams who no longer trust each other’s numbers.

Why Are Transportation Costs Difficult to Control?

What you see: Freight spend is above budget & nobody can fully explain why.

Why this happens:

• Rate tables are old or maintained differently in different places, so the calculated cost does not match the carrier’s invoice
• Extra charges and surcharges are not fully set up, so they only appear at invoice stage
• Planned cost and actual cost are never compared properly, so gaps go unnoticed
• Freight settlement is partly manual, which causes errors and slow disputes
• Costs are not allocated back to orders, customers or business units, so nobody owns the spend

What we do: We take a sample of shipments and put three numbers side by side. Planned cost, settled cost, and the carrier’s invoice. The pattern in the differences usually points straight at the cause.

What it costs you: Your team spends more time arguing about invoices than actually reducing freight spend.

Quick Check: Where Should You Look First?

This will not give you a full answer. But it will tell you whether you are dealing with a data problem, a settings problem, or a process problem.

How SCM Champs Finds the Real Cause

We do not start by changing settings. Changing settings on top of bad data just moves the problem somewhere else.

We work through five layers, in this order:

1. Data — Is your master data correct and the same across all systems?
2. Configuration — Do the current rules still match how the business runs today?
3. Planning logic — Does the system have the right limits, and enough freedom to make good decisions?
4. Integration — Does information move cleanly between TM, ERP, EWM and your carriers?
5. Process — Does the way people actually work match the way the system expects them to work?

In our experience, problems that keep coming back usually trace to data or process gaps, not to configuration alone. That is why we check those first, before touching any settings.

We then define what needs fixing, rebuild it, test it against real situations rather than clean test data, and stay with you through go-live and afterwards.

Before You Think About Migrating or Replacing SAP TM

If your current SAP TM is underperforming, migration is not automatically the answer.

We see this a lot. A system is not delivering, so the conversation turns straight to S/4HANA, as if a new platform will clear the problem. Sometimes it does. Often it just carries the same data and process gaps into a newer system, where they cost more to fix.

Find out first whether the problem sits in data, configuration, planning logic, integration or process. Once you know that, you can make a proper decision: optimise what you already have, or move to something bigger.

SAP TM on S/4HANA: When Does It Make Sense?

SAP TM on S/4HANA brings planning, execution and settlement together in one place. How much value you get depends almost entirely on how well it connects with everything around it.

It is worth looking at when transportation planning has to sit inside your S/4HANA landscape, when your own business rules need to drive planning instead of standard defaults, or when rate management and freight settlement need to work off the same data as the rest of finance.

Our job is not just to move you to S/4HANA. We look at your processes and goals first, then tell you honestly where SAP TM will add real value, and where it will not.

Embedded TM or a Separate TM System?

There is no single right answer here, because the decision depends on your landscape, not on a rule. Here is what actually drives it:

In simple words: embedded TM can work well when transportation is closely tied to a single S/4HANA environment. A separate TM deployment often makes more sense when transportation has to serve multiple ERPs, or when planning volumes and architecture point that way.

We would rather help you work through this properly now than fix it two years later.

Our SAP TM Services

SAP TM Planning & Optimization — Planning strategies, optimizer settings and constraints reworked so plans get used instead of rebuilt in Excel.

SAP TM Freight Unit & Freight Order Management — Grouping and freight order rules fixed, so orders that should travel together actually do.

SAP TM Freight Cost & Settlement — Rates, charges and settlement cleaned up so planned, settled and invoiced costs line up.

SAP TM–EWM Integration — Planning and warehouse execution connected properly, so status moves without anyone chasing it.

SAP TM Implementation & Migration — New rollouts, legacy transportation moves, and migration into your S/4HANA landscape.

SAP TM Post-Go-Live Support — Ongoing help with settings, changes and new requirements as your business changes.

Already Have an SAP Partner? You Do Not Have to Replace Them.

You do not need to move your whole SAP landscape to work with us. We often come in for one specific problem that has stayed unsolved — consolidation, planning, freight cost, TM-EWM integration, or performance after go-live — while your existing partner or internal team carries on managing everything else.

We fix the thing that is stuck, explain what caused it, and leave your team better placed to keep it working.

What Changes Afterwards

Based on our recent client work:

• 25% to 40% fewer manual planning interventions after reworking freight unit rules and optimizer settings
• 15% to 35% improvement in truck utilisation on lanes where consolidation was previously failing
• Over 80% reduction in freight cost variance between planned and actual costs on settled shipments
• Hours instead of days to resolve TM-EWM status issues that used to need manual follow-up

These ranges come from a cross-section of our recent projects. What your business sees will depend on what the assessment finds.

Proof

Our focus is SAP TM, and we have been doing this long enough to know where problems hide.

• 40+ SAP TM projects delivered — implementations, optimizations, and post-go-live rescues
• 12 years of SAP TM focus across versions, from classic TM to embedded TM on S/4HANA
• 15+ countries, with depth in European road freight, complex LTL, and intermodal flows
• Industries: chemicals, FMCG, retail distribution, automotive logistics
• Our senior consultants are SAP TM certified

Consolidation failures at a chemicals manufacturer

Problem: Two plants shipping into the same distribution network. Orders for the same customer on the same day consistently left on separate trucks. Truck utilisation on their primary lane was stuck at 62%.

Real cause: Two issues working together. A freight unit building rule from the original implementation was separating orders on a shipping condition field that had become obsolete. And their transportation lanes did not reflect a new cross-dock they had opened, so the optimizer could not see the valid shared route.

What we changed: Removed the obsolete shipping condition from the consolidation rule, and rebuilt the transportation lanes to include the new cross-dock. No custom code.

Result: Truck utilisation went from 62% to 84% within six weeks. That removed around 12 trucks per week from the road and saved over €400,000 in annual freight spend.

Planner distrust at a European FMCG distributor

Problem: Fourteen planners, each spending the first two hours of every day rebuilding the system’s freight orders in Excel before entering them back into SAP. The system plan was effectively unused.

Real cause: The optimizer was running with hard constraints for delivery windows that did not exist in reality, and its cost profile put cost ahead of service. The business priority was the other way round. Planners knew it, and overrode the system to protect delivery promises.

What we changed: Ran calibration workshops with the planners, converted the non-existent hard windows into soft constraints, and adjusted the cost profile to prioritise on-time delivery first. Then ran a two-week simulation with the planners before switching it on.

Result: Manual planning time dropped by 30%. The system’s first plan became the accepted plan for 70% of orders, up from 20%. On-time delivery improved by 5%.

Common Questions

Our SAP TM is already live. Can you help, or do you only do new projects? Most of our work is with systems that are already running. Live systems that underperform are exactly what we do.

How long does an assessment take? For a normal mid-size setup, a few weeks. It depends on how many processes and connections are involved.

Do we have to move to S/4HANA to fix these problems? Usually not. Many grouping, planning and cost issues can be fixed in your current system. If migration really is the answer, we will say so. If it is not, we will say that too.

What is the difference between embedded TM and a separate TM system? Embedded runs inside S/4HANA. A separate deployment runs on its own. Which one fits depends on your ERP landscape, transportation complexity, planning load and upgrade strategy. See the section above.

We are still on an older SAP transportation setup. What are our options? Old transportation setups do not move across to SAP TM one-to-one. Some things carry over, others need rethinking. We check what transfers and what needs redesigning before any migration starts.

Do you support us after go-live? Yes. Support after go-live is part of what we do, not an extra.

How do we know if our problem is data, settings or process? That is what the assessment tells you. The table above gives you a rough idea, but the real answer comes from following actual orders through your system.

Not Sure What Is Causing the Problem?

If the same SAP TM issues keep coming back, they will not fix themselves. There is a reason underneath, and it can be found.

Let SCM Champs trace the issue across data, configuration, planning logic, integration and process. You will get a clear picture of what is holding your transportation back, and what it will take to fix it.

Book an SAP TM Assessment