The integration is mostly REST. We did the REST interfacing. We did add the sales component, to get the Misc charge, and that just calls an additional API, but Mercury Gate did that work for us.
The cost is more expensive than QuickShip, for obvious reasons. You have optimizers and trackers for shipments, drivers, hubs and more reporting on your shipments. You have route control that the carrier will follow and tools to give the fastest and best routes. Most carriers are EDI responsive so if the carrier uses EDI they can send their information directly to Mercury Gate.
Lets be clear, Mercury Gate is NOT QuickShip. QuickShip is generic tool to allow you to print paperwork, setup FedEx, UPS and carriers with codes to better ship your product. Mercury Gate handles all of that stuff. Mercury Gate is a tool used to optimize your shipments from Quote to Cash. It also hooks into your Customer Connect platform so Customers can track their shipments. Weāre talking āNext Levelā shipping. QuickShip is āBasicā compared to Mercury Gate.
If you guys are interested in Mercury Gate or any other TMS system give them a call and interview them. Thatās what we did and we found a new revenue stream for the business that consolidated all of our shipping across all 7 divisions of our company.
Two best TMS system to look at:
MPO
Mercury Gate
They do their pricing by the Volume of Shipping per Year.
Hello all. I was referred to this chat by a customer who wishes to remain anonymous. Navigating the current landscape of TMS systems is tricky proposition. There are a lot of names mentioned which we are quite familiar with. All will promise you the moon and this can be a very frustrating experience. We are happy to help you answer questions in your journey, regardless if you think are the best solution: http://swanleap.com.
Mention Epicor Chat in the comments on our website, or look us up on Linkedin. We can definitely give you a rundown of the pros and cons of the systems mentioned above and references to customers who have used the aforementioned systems in the past.
I think www.swanleap.com is worth exploring, if we switch from the expensive QuickShip ā we would explore SwanLeap ā I know they have saved their customers a ton of money and are in it to change the game. Last time I heard they had implemented with a few Epicor Customers!
Iāve never heard of SwanLeap, but definitely look into them. The one word of caution I would add to all users is that any TMS needs to have a Return on Investment, ROI. Your TMS needs to make money for your business. Another piece of food for thought. We found that most TMS system providers use Mercury Gate, hence why we chose them.
Some others to consider besides MPO, Swan Leap and Mercury Gate. We interviewed the below companies:
Coyote is a freight broker owned by UPS.
Kuebix is a good company too and should be evaluated based on your needs. We know the pros and cons of them as well.
Gartnerā¦ its doubtful anyone on this thread is in the market for a Gartner SPONSORED recomendation.
Does anybody have any updates with TMS recommendations? We were about to sign a contract with Kuebix when they announced they were sunsetting. We have looked into a few, but none seem to check all of the boxes. We are specifically wanting a way to ship products to at least NA (US, Mex, Can) with Freight Auditing capabilities.
Weāre looking into replacing Manifest (QuickShip), and Mercury Gate seems like the front runner TMS. As long as the ROI predictions from the integrator (Rock Farm) hold true, the freight savings will more than cover the cost. Weāll be running everything through the TMS, including parcel, but the savings will be on LTL and TL. We can finally get on a current rate base, and might be able to combine and split up LTLās going the same direction.
We havenāt started yet, but so far RockFarm seems like a solid integrator.
Yes. Rockfarm is a VAR for Mercury Gate. Theyāve done an Epicor integration (pre-REST where files are dropped/consumed/ftpād) with another local Epicor customer, but weāll be using the APIās.
Iām curious about your integration with Mercury Gate. We are looking at TMS solutions. I really want to like Quick Ship, but it seems so restrictive. You are stuck with the integrations they have.
Weāre getting closer with Mercury Gate, and are testing the different ship viaās and label printing this week in our DEV environment. Do you guys do a lot of LTL or Truckload freight? That seems to be a strong suit for MercuryGate.
I remember chatting with you at one of the Insights a few years back!
We do about 20% of our outbound shipping LTL. But it causes about 90% of our headaches. Inbound is a much higher percentage. We were very interested in Quick Ship because of the pre-built integration to Kinetic. But it does not integrate with anything else. No APIās to Quick Ship. A challenge for us is the ācontainerizationā step at the sale or quote. Every TMS in the world can get shipping prices with weights and dims. Our salespeople donāt have dims. We are looking at Shipper HQ to provide estimated dims based on the information we do have. (weight, density, longest dimension) But Quick Ship canāt integrate with that. On the shipping side, for LTL Quick Ship works with CH Robinson. But if I wanted to integrate with a different 3PL or a carrier not contracted with CH Robinson, Iām out of luck. Weāre leaning toward Kuehne + Nagel for the 3PL provider and maybe just use their TMS. They seem flexible and have a prebuilt integration with Shipper HQ. They also have APIās that will allow us to integrate with Kinetic. But we still have a lot to learn about it. Mercury Gate seems well regarded, I was hoping to find out more about it and a few others before we make a final decision.
Regards,
Doug Harvey
Director of West Coast Operations
818-505-6290 x427
800-360-5056 x427
818-505-6293 (fax)
818-262-5718 (mobile) RoseBrand.com
Rose Brand East, 4 Emerson Lane, Secaucus, NJ 07094
Rose Brand West, 11440 Sheldon Street, Sun Valley CA 91352
CA Lic. #: 1024256 *** For Invoice and Credit Card Receipt Copies ā Lockstep ***
Doug - Weāre using RockFarm in Dubuque, IA as our integrator for MercuryGate - Reach out to them, they can do a demo. I can give more feedback once weāre live and weāre living it day to day. Weāre looking forward to rate shopping TL and LTL when building quotes and orders. So far there is no HotShot rate shopping, but weāve got a formula based off of TL that should work.
