TMS Hypercare Protocol: The 90-Day Stabilization Framework That Prevents 80% of Post-Go-Live Operational Failures
Your TMS just went live. The champagne bottles are empty, the project team is celebrating, and your phone starts ringing. Welcome to hypercare, where 80% of post-go-live operational failures happen because teams lack a structured TMS hypercare protocol. Here's the 90-day framework that prevents most of them.
The Critical First 72 Hours: Emergency Response Setup
You have exactly 72 hours to establish your command center before the chaos hits. Skip this setup, and you'll spend the next month playing defense instead of managing the transition.
Set up a physical or virtual war room with direct lines to your vendor's escalation team. For platforms like Manhattan Active or Blue Yonder, this means having your dedicated support manager on speed dial. Cargoson users get real-time monitoring dashboards that surface issues before they impact shipments. MercuryGate customers should have their technical consultant available for the first week.
Create a three-tier escalation matrix. Tier 1 handles routine questions and basic troubleshooting. Tier 2 takes configuration issues and process gaps. Tier 3 escalates to vendor support for system defects. Post this matrix where everyone can see it.
Your stakeholder communication protocol needs to run on autopilot. Send daily status emails to executive sponsors for the first two weeks, then shift to weekly. Include three numbers: tickets opened, tickets resolved, and critical issues outstanding. Nothing else matters during hypercare.
Week 1-2: Intensive Monitoring and Issue Triage
The first two weeks reveal problems your testing never caught. Real shipment volumes, actual user behavior, and integration hiccups surface quickly. Your job is to catch them before they cascade.
Run daily 15-minute standups with your core team. Cover new issues, escalations pending, and any vendor communications. Don't turn this into a general project meeting. Focus on problems that need immediate attention.
Monitor your integration points hourly. API timeouts, webhook failures, and data sync issues multiply fast under production load. Set up automated alerts for connection failures and response time degradation. Most TMS platforms including Cargoson provide monitoring dashboards, but you need someone watching them actively during hypercare.
Setting Up Your Issue Classification System
Not every support ticket deserves the same priority. Create four categories that your team can apply consistently:
System Defect: The TMS isn't working as configured. Labels won't print, rates aren't calculating, or integrations are failing. These get vendor escalation immediately.
Training Gap: Users can't complete a task because they don't know the process. Route these to your super-users first, vendor support second.
New Requirement: Users want functionality that wasn't in scope. Log these for post-hypercare evaluation. Don't try to solve them during stabilization.
Process Design Issue: The system works, but your business process doesn't fit. These need business owner decisions, not technical fixes.
Tag every ticket with one of these categories. After two weeks, you'll see patterns that guide your resource allocation.
Week 3-4: Resource Transition Planning
Your project team needs to step back while your operational team steps forward. This transition determines whether hypercare succeeds or becomes a four-month extension project.
Schedule formal handover sessions for each major process area. Your implementation consultants walk through configurations with the people who will maintain them. Document every custom setting, workflow rule, and integration mapping. You'll need this documentation when your consultant moves to another project.
Shift your daily standups to include operational managers alongside project team members. By week 4, operational managers should be leading these calls. Project managers become advisors, not decision makers.
Create access credentials for your ongoing support team. Remove project team access for anyone not staying in an operational role. This forces knowledge transfer and prevents the "ask the consultant" dependency that haunts post-go-live operations.
Month 2: Process Refinement and User Feedback
Users have formed opinions about your new TMS by now. Some love it, some hate it, most are confused about something specific. Your job is to separate valid feedback from change resistance.
Deploy user surveys targeting specific process areas. Don't ask "How's the new system?" Ask "Which part of order processing takes longer than before?" and "What causes you to call for help most often?" Specific questions yield actionable feedback.
Run process improvement workshops for your highest-volume transactions. Gather super-users from each department and walk through real scenarios. Look for workarounds people have created. These often point to configuration gaps or training needs.
Schedule training reinforcement sessions for processes showing high error rates. Don't repeat initial training. Focus on the specific steps where users struggle. Record these sessions for future reference.
Month 3: Exit Criteria and BAU Preparation
Hypercare ends when your system operates predictably, not when the calendar says so. Define measurable exit criteria before month 3 begins.
Your SLA targets should match normal operations. If your standard response time for rate requests is under 2 seconds, hypercare continues until you consistently hit that target. If label printing completes in under 5 seconds normally, don't exit hypercare at 8 seconds.
Measure ticket volume trends. Successful hypercare programs see support requests drop 60-70% between week 2 and week 12. If your ticket volume stays flat, you have systemic issues to address.
Complete your operational handover checklist. This includes updated SOPs, admin access credentials, vendor relationship documentation, and escalation procedures. Your business-as-usual team should operate the system without asking project team members for help.
Common Hypercare Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
Even well-planned hypercare programs hit predictable problems. Here's how to avoid the big ones.
Resource drain: Project team members get pulled into operational support indefinitely. Set firm dates for their transition off the support roster. Replace their knowledge with documentation and trained operational staff.
Scope creep: Business users submit enhancement requests disguised as defects. TMS implementations regularly fail when teams try to solve new requirements during hypercare. Log these requests for Phase 2 evaluation.
Vendor dependency: Your team escalates everything to vendor support instead of building internal capability. Set escalation thresholds. Simple configuration changes should stay internal after week 2.
Communication breakdown: Status updates stop flowing to stakeholders once the immediate crisis passes. Maintain regular communication until formal hypercare exit. Silence creates anxiety and second-guessing.
Your 90-Day Hypercare Checklist
Days 1-3: Establish command center, confirm vendor escalation contacts, deploy monitoring alerts, brief all stakeholders on communication protocol.
Week 1: Daily standups, hourly integration monitoring, classify and route all support tickets, document issues for pattern analysis.
Week 2: Continue daily standups, review ticket patterns, adjust monitoring thresholds, schedule handover sessions with operational team.
Weeks 3-4: Begin operational handover, transition standup leadership, create ongoing access credentials, remove project team access where appropriate.
Month 2: Deploy user feedback surveys, run process improvement workshops, schedule training reinforcement, measure SLA performance against targets.
Month 3: Validate exit criteria completion, finalize operational documentation, confirm BAU team readiness, execute formal hypercare closure.
The difference between successful and struggling TMS implementations often comes down to those first 90 days after go-live. Follow this protocol, adapt it to your specific environment, and your team will transition from implementation chaos to operational stability. Most importantly, you'll avoid becoming part of that 50% who struggle to see positive ROI within 18 months.
