How Business Intelligence Can Automate Workflow

What drives a transportation company’s success? Is it a flawless on-time delivery system? Is it streamlined integration of safety best practices? Is it inventory status? Whichever of these KPIs (key performance indicators) your organization is looking at, BI (business intelligence) tools can enhance and expand each stakeholder’s capacity to view and analyze them in real-time and across functionalities (Source: http://www.inetsoft.com/products/). To illustrate some of the advantages for fleet managers of using BI, we’ll look at the experience Mesilla Valley Transport has had since implementing a robust BI to capture and manage KPIs.

Case Study: BI Supports Accountability at Mesilla Valley Transport (MVT)

There were clear motivating factors that led to the company reexamining the systems governing the managing of operations. For one thing, the system MVT had been using was pretty limited in terms of reporting capabilities. Desired data wasn’t stored. For example, while managers could see the last person who’d accessed data, they could not see if they had changed a value – making it possible for customer service representatives to change a delivery date of a late load and avoid detection. In addition to improving the veracity of data auditing, MVT also needed a more efficient way to capture data, correlate it from multiple operating systems, and synthesize it in a unifying database.

Lessons Learned

Querying works best if done from a secondary database, rather than directly from MVT’s transport management system (TMS). Another best practice for those bringing BI on board is to determine what KPIs need to be measured, so that secondary KPIs that may seem highly relevant to one division don’t end up driving the focus of what you’re analyzing. In other, as you would your battles, you must (wisely) pick your metrics. MVT developed BI incrementally, in stages. IT began generating reports and then KPIs were defined for specific managers or teams, based on their responsibilities. Examples of KPIs measured include: utilization, mpg, out-of-route, driver turnover, and on-time service.

MVT now has visual dashboards, accessible through a SharePoint web interface, which provide snapshots of the KPIs and workflow – micro and macro – most germane to any given user, so that when a glitch occurs (e.g., delayed or projected late loads, unassigned drivers, and out-of-route drivers) they can respond with greater alacrity and confidence.

What They See

Fault codes: Engine fault are reparsed into a “human readable” form.

Inspections: Tire pressure, number of vehicles, and tread depth, is captured for every truck that drives through their front gate of its facilities. Also, MTVs workflow checks each driver’s safety qualifications between check points, as well as any damage to vehicles and who was responsible.

Accessorials: This dashboard shows customer service managers where accessorial charges can be collected and the BI platform queries that identify opportunities for detention.

Driver portal: Drivers can view performance metrics available to fleet managers and access driver settlements and payroll stubs (Source:http://www.ccjdigital.com/business-intelligence-tools-can-drive-accountability-automate-workflow/).