Organizers of TMW Systems' annual TransForum users conference had to add additional overflow housing at hotels in Dallas as the 24th annual event attracted more than 1,400 attendees, up significantly from the approximately 1,000 last year.


"This kind of exceeded our wildest dreams," said TMW President and CEO David Wangler. "We were expecting maybe 15 percent more than las year."

The event was originally scheduled to be held in Nashville, Tenn., but was moved after flooding damage to the Gaylord Opryland hotel. The Texas location will be the site for the TransForum event again in 2011.

The gathering attracted customers of all sizes, including two operations people from the 20-truck fleet of Howmet Transportation, a division of Alcoa, which uses TMW's TruckMate product. There were 250 different classes aimed at users of the various TMW products.

Quite a few first-time attendees were customers of Innovative, which TMW acquired late last year. Wangler was impressed by that turnout, noting that there were actually more Innovative customers at the TMW event than there were at Innovative's user conference last year. And, he pointed out, the TMW conference required more of a time commitment.

In a sit-down meeting with trade editors, Wangler highlighted a few of the things TMW has been working on. For instance, he said, the TruckMate development team has continued to enhance the intermodal and LTL capabilities of its product. "It has been a tremendous year for that product," he said. "It seems like the LTL companies woke up and said, 'It's time to invest in technology.'"

The Innovative team is focusing on adding stronger integration with TMT maintenance software and more brokerage capabilities. Wangler said the recent change in leadership was based partly on customer feedback. (See "TMW Hires New Director of Development for Innovative," 7/14/2010.)

There's increased interest in managed services and software as a service, and TMW is making some of its other software, such as ExpertFuel and the TMW imaging product, available to Innovative's Access Plus SAAS customers.

There have been a number of improvements to the TMW Suite product; "Gosh, I saw stuff I didn't even know we were doing," Wangler said of the TMW Suite educational session. For instance, there were some projects going on where developers are using Microsoft Silverlight 4.0 technology, he said, which offers a richer web browser experience. The TMT maintenance team is using that as well.

Overall, Wangler said, the crows seemed upbeat. "It's markedly different from last year," he said. "There's a spark among the attendees that wasn't there last year."