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Buyer's guide
YMS RFP scorecard — twenty questions for vendors
RFPs for yard management software fail when they treat dock scheduling, WMS yard tabs, and full YMS platforms as interchangeable. Use this scorecard to verify one visit record, gate-out closeout, and yard intelligence — without requiring customer references you do not have yet.
Structure
How to run the scorecard
Weight gate-out and closeout highest — fragmented systems look fine in gate demos and fail when finance needs departure facts in ERP. Require a live walkthrough, not slide decks.
- Single visit record gate-in through gate-out
- Stage-level dwell — not total hours only
- Carrier portal with site rules
- Gate-out webhooks and ERP events
- Role-based access per site
Questions
Twenty RFP questions
Adapt wording for your procurement template. Each question maps to a module in the yard management suite.
- Does incomplete gate-in block entry?
- Is yard map live occupancy?
- How does dock tie to staging?
- What fires at gate-out?
- How is AI-assisted — who approves?
Next step
See gate, yard, and closeout on your workflow
Request a guided demo — or read the YMS buyer's guide before your RFP.