SAP TM Consulting Services: Fixing Consolidation, Planning and Freight Cost Problems

Is your SAP TM live, but is your business still struggling with transportation operations? 

When the data, processes, configurations, and integration do not work together, the system fails to generate the desired results. Freight may not be consolidated as expected, SAP TM and systems connected with it may show conflicting statuses, freight costs may not match carrier invoices, and planners may rely on manual processing and spreadsheets to streamline processes and operations.   

SCM Champs helps businesses diagnose and fix these SAP TM problems at their root. We assess the processes, data, configuration, and integrations behind the issue, identify what is actually causing the disruption, and implement practical fixes instead of treating only the symptoms.

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Where SAP TM Operations Break Down: How SCM Champs Helps Fix Them

Most transportation problems that businesses face aren’t because of the SAP ™ system itself. It is the combination of multiple factors like data, processes, or configuration that becomes obsolete over time. The existing system collects data from multiple sources, adds many configurations over years, and supports various functionalities over years. 

Over time, some of this data and functionalities may become obsolete and may no longer be useful to meet modern needs. Meanwhile, they can add to ongoing transportation costs. Here is what we see most leaders face and ask to fix. 

Why is SAP TM Unable to Consolidate Freight Units Correctly?  

If SAP TM is not consolidating orders that could have shipped together, check the Freight Unit Building Rule (FUBR).  

FUBR might be splitting freight units separately when the orders may differ in configuration criteria such as Incoterms, shipping conditions, and other relevant attributes.    

If the criteria no longer align with the current business process, it might prevent shipments from being consolidated as expected.

Incompatibility settings that are too strict, transportation lanes that do not match how goods really move, and capacity limits set only by weight are the other common causes. In our experience, this is almost always a configuration or master data issue, not a limitation of the optimiser. Fixing it is usually the fastest way to improve truck utilisation on lanes where consolidation is failing.

Why are planners still using Excel instead of SAP TM?

Planners go back to Excel when the planning profile, optimiser settings and constraints no longer match how the business runs. The usual causes are hard constraints for delivery windows that do not exist in reality, a cost profile that puts freight cost ahead of service, and real limits like dock timings or driver hours that were never entered into the system. The plans come out wrong, trust goes, and the work moves to spreadsheets. To reduce manual planning, the settings have to reflect how the network actually operates — training alone will not bring planners back to the system.

Why do status in SAP TM and SAP EWM vary?  

When the shipment status is not updated in SAP TM and EWM in real time, the status may vary. The usual causes are master data maintained differently on each side, deliveries and freight orders created at different times, and failed messages sitting in queues that nobody monitors. It is normally one message type or one field that is broken, not the whole integration — which is why shipment status visibility can usually be restored without touching the wider interface.

Why don’t SAP TM costs match carrier invoices?

Freight cost variance in SAP TM builds up when rate tables and condition records are outdated or maintained in more than one place, when surcharges are missing from the charge calculation sheet, and when settlement is partly manual. Costs that are never allocated back to orders or customers make the gap harder to spot. Compare the carrier invoice, planned cost, and settled cost for the same shipment. This difference helps identify where the gaps are and whether the real issue lies in planning, cost calculation, settlement or carrier billing.

So, can you fix SAP TM problems without moving to S/4HANA?

Often yes. Many consolidation, planning and freight cost problems come from data, configuration, planning logic, integration or process, and all of those can be addressed in your current system. Migrating before you have diagnosed the cause tends to carry the same gaps into a newer platform, where they usually cost more to fix.

When SAP TM Fails to Keep Up with Business Changes 

Most SAP TM systems are set up correctly at go-live. Then the business moves on.

New customers arrive. Routes change. Product mix shifts. Volumes grow. But the configuration inside SAP TM stays as it was, because nobody owns reviewing it. Master data drifts. Rules that made sense three years ago quietly block things today.

So people work around the system. A planner starts checking one thing in Excel. Someone calls the warehouse instead of trusting the status. A shortcut becomes the normal way of working. Once that happens, the system and the business are running on two different sets of rules, and every new problem looks like a system fault.

SAP TM is often not the problem; it’s the system that no longer reflects how the business actually operates.

This is the work SCM Champs does. We come into systems that are already live, trace where the system and the business stopped matching, and bring them back together. Usually that means adjusting rules, cleaning data and fixing process gaps, not rebuilding anything.

How SCM Champs Analyses SAP TM Across Five Key Layers

We work through five critical layers before suggesting any solution. 

• Data: Is the master data correct and consistent across all systems?
• Configuration: Do the current rules still match how the business runs today?
• Planning logic: Are the constraints and optimiser settings appropriate for your network?
• Integration: Is information moving correctly between TM, ERP, EWM, and your carriers?
• Process: Are people working the way the system was designed to expect?

We do not start by changing settings. We focus on quality data. Problems that keep occurring frequently are due to gaps in data and processes. 

Only once we know the root cause do we suggest what needs to be fixed and rebuilt. 

Where to start looking

This will not give you the full answer, but it will tell you which layer to start with.

SAP TM Consulting Services SCM Champs Offers

The team of SAP experts at SCM Champs helps design and configure the system from scratch, from assessment to implementation to after go-live support. We help businesses with new SAP TM rollouts or migrating from a legacy SAP TM system. 

SAP TM Planning and Optimisation: We rework planning strategies, VSR optimizer settings, and constraints so the system produces plans your planners will actually use. That usually means removing constraints that do not exist in reality and adjusting the cost profile to match your real business priorities. The aim is to reduce manual planning, not to add another layer of workarounds.

Freight Unit and Freight Order Management We fix freight unit building rules, incompatibility settings and freight order configuration so orders that should travel together actually do. Most consolidation failures trace back to one rule or one master data gap, and that is what we look for. On lanes where this has been going wrong for a while, the effect on truck utilisation is usually immediate.

Freight Cost and Settlement We clean up rate tables, condition records, surcharges and settlement configuration so planned, settled and invoiced costs line up, which brings freight cost variance down to something you can explain. We also set up proper cost allocation, so freight spend can be traced back to orders, customers or business units.

SAP TM–EWM Integration: We fix the handover points between TM, ERP, and EWM so shipment status moves without anyone chasing it, and both teams get the same visibility on where a load actually is. That covers master data alignment on both sides, message and queue error handling, and testing against real cases instead of clean test data.

SAP TM Implementation and Migration: We offer new SAP TM rollouts and support migration from legacy systems to a new version of the SAP TM S/4HANA landscape. 

Before migration, we first analyse what needs to be transferred and what needs to be redesigned so that the existing problem does not occur again.  

SAP TM Post Go-Live Support: We offer support after post go-live to ensure that the new configuration and changes are aligned with the business requirements. We understand that challenges may occur after migration, which is why our team is always there to help resolve issues on time.

Can Moving to S/4HANA Help Fix Your SAP TM Problems?

The new system helps solve the problems only when the migration has happened with the right planning and strategy.  

Sometimes migration does not help achieve the expected result. The reason is simple. If freight units are not consolidating because of an obsolete field in a grouping rule, that rule follows you to the new platform. If planners distrust the system because the optimiser has constraints that do not exist in reality, those settings migrate too. If TM and EWM statuses do not match because master data is maintained differently on each side, that mismatch does not resolve itself during a technical migration. Data, configuration, planning logic, integration and process problems travel with you, and they are more expensive to unpick after a migration than before it.

Analyse First and then decide

Once the root cause is known, it’s easier to fix the problem with the right planning. 

Many issues are fixable in your current system in weeks. Others genuinely do point towards a move.

Migration tends to make sense 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.

We come up with feasible and most relevant solutions that add business value. We assess the current landscape and then tell teams what needs to be fixed on priority and whether migrating to a newer S/4HANA version is most relevant. 

. If it is not, we will say that too.

Embedded TM vs Side-by-Side TM

SAP TM on S/4HANA can be deployed in two ways. Which one fits depends on your landscape, not on a general rule.

Embedded TM vs Side-by-Side TM

SAP TM on S/4HANA can be deployed in two ways. Which one fits depends on your landscape, not on a general rule.

One point worth knowing early: if SAP ECC is still in your landscape, side-by-side is normally the workable option.

Deployment and licensing options change over time. Confirm the current position against SAP's own documentation and your licensing agreement before making a decision.

How SCM Champs Helps Solve Real SAP TM Problems   

You do not have to replace your current SAP partner to work with us.

Most of our clients already have someone managing their SAP landscape — an implementation partner, a managed services provider, or an internal IT team. That arrangement usually works fine for day-to-day operations. What it often cannot absorb is one specific SAP TM problem that has stayed unsolved for months, because it needs deep transportation expertise rather than broad SAP coverage.

That is where we come in. We take the single issue that is stuck consolidation, planning adoption, freight cost variance, TM–EWM integration, or performance after go-live — while your existing partner or internal team carries on managing everything else. No handover of the wider landscape, no disruption to existing contracts.

We fix what is stuck, explain clearly what caused it, and leave your team in a better position to keep it working.

Selected SAP TM Engagements

Fixing freight unit consolidation 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%.

Root 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 optimiser could not see the valid shared route.

What changed: We removed the obsolete shipping condition from the consolidation rule and rebuilt the transportation lanes to include the new cross-dock. No custom development was needed.

Result: Truck capacity utilisation increased from 62 to 84 percent within 50 days. This reduced around 12 trucks in around 10 days and reduced the transportation costs by over Euro 400,000 in a year. 

Note: Client name withheld under confidentiality agreement

Restoring planner trust 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-generated plan was effectively unused.

Root cause: The optimiser was running with hard constraints for delivery windows that did not exist in practice, and its cost profile prioritised freight cost over service. The business priority was the other way round. The planners knew this and overrode the system to protect delivery promises.

What changed: We 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. We 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%.

Client name withheld under confidentiality agreement.

About SCM Champs

SCM Champs is a specialist SAP Transportation Management (SAP TM) consultancy headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, USA, with clients across multiple regions worldwide. SAP TM is at the core of what we do. It is not simply one service among many. It is our area of expertise.

With 12 years of experience in SAP TM services, we have handled more than 40 projects. We help organisations in manufacturing, FMCG, retail distribution, pharma, packaged food, the chemical industry, automobiles, and more to implement and optimise complex transportation operations.  

We also help migrate from SAP TM 9.x to embedded SAP TM on S/4HANA. 

Our consultants have strong experience in offering SAP supply chain services and solutions. 

What sets us apart is the depth of SAP TM expertise our team holds. Our senior consultants are SAP TM certified and bring a practical understanding of both the technology and the day-to-day transportation processes behind it. Whether you are starting a new SAP TM journey, improving an existing solution, or resolving issues after go-live, we focus on practical solutions that deliver real business value.

USA Office:

3524 Silverside Road, Suite 35B

Wilmington, DE 19810, USA

Regions served: North America, Europe, and other global regions (consultants have worked across 15+ countries)
Team size: Not specified in the provided content
SAP TM versions supported: SAP TM 9.x to embedded SAP TM on S/4HANA

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]