Inside LeverX's SAP TM Team

What does SAP Transportation Management consulting look like when you've already spent years working with the system?

We spoke with Practice Lead in SAP Transportation Solutions Vitali Streminski, SAP TM Team Lead Aleksandr Koliuzhnyi, and experienced consultant Aleksandra Radys-Niemowna about how they approach complex projects, collaborate across teams, and continue developing their expertise.

The team is currently recruiting an SAP TM Architect in Poland.

The Projects: Ferries, Freight Costs, and Custom Logic

LeverX serves clients ranging from mid-sized businesses to Fortune 500 companies across the US and Europe, where transportation processes can demand more than standard SAP TM functionality. Vitali Streminski explains:

“A customer may come to LeverX with a business process that does not fully fit standard SAP TM. The TM team first looks at how the process works today, what the business needs to achieve, and how SAP TM can support it.”

LeverX's projects show how different the custom solutions can be.

Ferry operations inside SAP TM

For a large European logistics and trucking provider, LeverX implemented SAP TM as the central platform for transportation planning and execution. To support ferry-specific shipment processes not covered by standard functionality, the team extended the standard solution to address these particular needs. SAP TM was also connected to an external tool for truck availability and a routing engine for tour planning, while SAP Event Management provided visibility into shipment progress and key events.

Freight costs that reach the trading desk

For a global commodities provider, LeverX integrated SAP TM with SAP Agricultural Contract Management (SAP ACM) and SAP Trader’s and Scheduler’s Workbench (SAP TSW) in SAP S/4HANA, connecting trading and transportation processes.

Nominations in TSW trigger the creation of freight units in TM, while load data from ACM updates freight orders. Transportation costs calculated and settled in TM are then transferred to the corresponding trading contracts.

Routes, maps, and live fleet data

For a European transport company, LeverX integrated SAP TM with PTV’s geographic services for address geocoding, route planning, toll calculations, and travel-time and distance estimates.

Integrations with Fleetboard and Dynafleet brought vehicle location and tachograph data into the transportation management process, helping planners track vehicles, estimate arrival times more accurately, and adjust routes when delays occur.

Long-running projects require a deep understanding of how systems evolve

LeverX has worked with a European full-truckload carrier operating more than 5,000 trucks. Over the years, its SAP TM system has evolved alongside the business to support the company’s specific transportation processes and business terminology.

Aleksandr joined the project long after its initial implementation, and a colleague gave him a warning he still remembers:

“No matter how much experience you have, you'll feel like a junior on this project.”

Much of the Work Happens Between SAP Modules

In most cases, SAP TM doesn't work in isolation. The team lead outlines the most common scenarios:

“At a minimum, TM interacts with MM or SD. Finance and Controlling may also be involved, and companies with warehouses often need integration with warehouse management.”

Large implementations require close coordination across teams and modules. One SAP TM project for a food retailer brought together more than 70 LeverX specialists.

Business users, developers, and consultants may use different terms for the same concept. Part of a consultant’s responsibility is to ensure a shared understanding. Aleksandr illustrates this:

“The same thing can have three different names across three modules. For example, transportation charges are represented by charge types in TM, service activities in MM, and condition types in SD billing. Before discussing a solution, the team first makes sure everyone is talking about the same thing.”

While explaining an idea to fellow specialists is one thing, making a convincing case for it to a potential customer requires a different skill set.

Pre-Sales: A Skill of Its Own

For Aleksandra and Aleksandr, pre-sales has become an important part of their professional growth. Aleksandra explains:

“We respond to requests for proposals and prepare live demonstrations. Before a demo, we configure a system to reflect a potential customer’s processes as closely as possible. This helps us show how SAP Transportation Management, sometimes together with SAP Business Network for Logistics and SAP EWM, can support their specific needs.”

This work has broadened her perspective on the role:

“Pre-sales encourages me to think more broadly about how to help companies improve their business processes.”

For Aleksandr, pre-sales has brought a different lesson:

“As a technical person, my first instinct is always to explain how things work under the hood. Potential customers, however, may have limited time and may not need every technical detail. I’m still learning how to explain the important things without overwhelming the audience.”

And both consultants agree that professional growth often means exploring unfamiliar territory.

Finding New Challenges After Years in SAP TM

Aleksandra and Aleksandr took different paths into SAP TM, and both keep finding opportunities to deepen their expertise after years in the field.

70% of professional learning comes from projects

Aleksandra has experience working on projects in Poland and internationally. She began her career in material planning, using SAP Materials Management as an end user. Later, Aleksandra moved into consulting and now specializes in SAP TM and SAP Business Network for Logistics, particularly Freight Collaboration.

Her experience on the business side still helps her understand customers' requirements.

The consultant estimates that around 70% of her professional learning comes from project work, supplemented by SAP courses, SAP Best Practices scenarios, and discussions with colleagues.

“There's always another level of complexity to explore,” she says.

When you need a second opinion

Even experienced consultants encounter challenges that require another specialist's perspective. Aleksandra says she can turn to developers, architects, or fellow consultants when she needs help evaluating a solution.

“Sometimes a brief conversation is enough to identify the next step. In other cases, we need to analyze things in more detail.”

She appreciates that colleagues are willing to share their experience.

“The support works in both directions. Sometimes someone helps me, and sometimes I can help another colleague. I'm really grateful for that.”

From an accidental start to leading a team

Aleksandr entered SAP TM almost by accident. He applied for what he thought was a developer position, only to discover that the company was recruiting a consultant. Six years later, he manages a team of five consultants. He now finds that progress becomes harder to measure as experience grows.

Early in a career, almost every task introduces something unfamiliar. Today, some of Aleksandr’s most interesting assignments have involved connecting SAP TM with external bidding systems so that rates agreed upon in tenders could automatically update freight agreements. The difficulty lay partly in SAP TM's data structure.

A freight agreement contains items linked to calculation sheets. Those sheets reference rate tables, which have their own scales and validity periods. Updating a rate requires finding the correct records throughout that structure.

SAP TM supports Excel uploads, but the files must follow a system-generated template. External bidding platforms may use entirely different formats. Aleksandr explains:

“When rates come from an outside system in their own format, that option is gone, and you have to build the logic yourself. Honestly, that was the part I enjoyed most.”

AI at Work

Customers increasingly use AI to explore SAP TM capabilities. In controlled test environments, AI can also help consultants investigate standard code and review custom developments, reducing some of the manual effort involved.

Customers sometimes bring AI-generated suggestions to project discussions. The team lead describes this:

“A customer may explore an idea with ChatGPT and come back with a proposed solution. We look at how it fits their business processes and SAP TM setup, explain the options, and help them choose the right approach.”

As LeverX takes on more ambitious SAP TM projects, the team is looking to expand. Vitali shares:

“We’re growing and looking for experienced specialists to join us.”