Freight business delivers business analytics via dashboards

The largest independently owned courier and express freight business in Australia, Allied Express, is undertaking an IT project to improve its financial and operational planning, reporting and analytics, with added visibility into key performance indicators through dashboards.

Boasting a multi-channel courier network. Allied Express has vast amounts of customer data to analyse and report.

The freight company selected business analytics software provider Applix and BI consultants, Cortell, to undertake implementation.

Earlier this year Allied implemented a datamart which captured all the information employees need to make effective business decisions.

The company's managing director, Michelle McDowell, said the trouble began when they had to determine what to actually do with all of this information.

"Instead of analyzing the good, bad and ugly, we spend too much time preparing reports," McDowell said.

With this implementation, he said the company can eliminate the extra cycles associated with readying reports and can further focus on better service to customers. "Recently, Allied had begun receiving more ad-hoc analytical queries from both within the business and customers," he explained.

"We can now get accurate information to the right people in a timely manner, enabling them to make more strategic decisions based on predictive intelligence rather than historical information." Cortell Australia managing director, Matthew Hill, provided Allied with case studies to provide a suitable framework for implementation.

"Providing examples of how another company, in the same industry, had successfully deployed this platform enabled Allied to realize the same benefits," he said.

Applix Asia Pacific vice president, Jay Howald, said the goal was to establish a "single version of the truth" for faster reporting and more accurate decision making.

"The Applix platform provides one view of information, but still allows a user to drill into the data and transactions to complete advanced analytics," he said. "Organizations of all sizes are looking for a flexible, easy to manipulate platform to meet their business agility needs.

"They want insight into critical questions, allowing decision makers to easily convert stored data into actionable information and to adapt business strategies in real-time." Allied Express has a fleet of more than 1000 vehicles.

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