Transportation companies maintain data files on sales, operations, accounting, maintenance and human resources. The data can be captured on paper or in computer systems. It is often scattered throughout companies in data bases that are incompatible, incorrect, outdated or inaccessible.

One large trucking company, U.S. Xpress, decided to see what they could “mine” from the data in their company. The $1.4 billion trucking company recruited Tim Leonard away from Dell where he was responsible for their data warehousing architecture to become their chief technology officer. Tim’s mandate was to see what he could glean from U.S. Express’ data to help improve the company’s profitability.

According to a recent Journal of Commerce report, Tim found a “lot of data in different silos in different areas.” He also found a large amount of data streaming in from the company’s computers. “Just with DriverTech, our in-cab information system, we got over 900 data elements with every pull.” This level of data was coming from over 9000 trucks. On top of that, much of the data was “dirty - - incorrect, inconsistent or incomplete. This prevented the company from producing the types of dashboards and business intelligence reports we wanted . . .”

The U.S. Xpress Solution

The company had “cleaned” its data five years ago but it had not maintained this effort thereby allowing the data to become “dirty” and impossible to use. Leonard launched a data quality initiative using applications from Informatica, a software vendor that provides data integration and management tools. He began with a pilot to identify, collect and clean data associated with truck idling time. Leonard created an idle report that linked truck numbers, driver names, and the fleet manager responsible for each particular truck. The project took six weeks to complete and two weeks to test.

Benefits to U.S. Xpress

Leonard and his team produced a report, backed by solid data that is estimated to save U.S. Xpress $6 million a year across its fleet of 9200 trucks. The payback period on the software investment was three months. Leonard then expanded his data cleansing and mining initiative to include maintenance, operations and customer relations management. One maintenance “data-mart” and six executive dashboards replaced 400 reports.

Small and mid size fleets can also benefit from data cleansing and mining. Mesilla Valley Transportation (MVT) is one of the largest transportation providers in Western Texas and Southern New Mexico, with a fleet of 800 trucks and 3,500 trailers that haul goods across North America. To manage costs, MVT sought to watch every penny and count every mile per gallon, per driver. Yet, employees struggled to understand profitability and performance, manually cobbling together information from siloed data sources using various tools and resources.

“We also had a problem on the financial side of the house,” says Mike Kelley, Director of Information Technology at MVT. “Our transportation management system didn’t provide consolidated reports or historical information for trending analysis. Our complex corporate structure includes multiple companies using multiple accounting systems. Producing a consolidated financial statement was a manual, time-intensive process.”

Dean Rigg, Chief Financial Officer at MVT, wanted tools to measure companywide performance. “Business intelligence is about showing employees our goals and encouraging them to perform. We had no way to say to everyone, ‘Here is where we are today; this is where we want to be tomorrow.’ Instead, the route planners and fleet managers had to pull month-old data from a variety of places. They were making business decisions based on a gut feeling rather than from factual information.”

Key performance indicators (KPIs) were calculated monthly, using complex Microsoft Office Excel worksheets. Management turned to the IT department for custom reports on KPIs such as average miles per truck, per day; rate per mile, per area; long idle/short idle data; business by sales representative; and average accessorial revenue per truck (extra services that are billable, such as including several workers to unload goods, or just-in-time delivery). Soon, 3 of the 11 IT staff members were working full time delivering reports. IT staff members struggled to consolidate data from disparate sources. Also, they used different methodologies for reports, which diluted management’s faith in the data.

“We immediately started looking for a comprehensive business intelligence solution from a single vendor,” says Kelley. “In these tough economic times, we didn’t want to pay for a costly, difficult-to-use solution or try to cobble different tools together. The solution had to be easy to deploy and use so we could start seeing the value sooner rather than later.”

The Mesilla Valley Solution

Mesilla Valley Transportation chose a business intelligence solution from Microsoft. The solution provides MVT with a suite of technologies that gathers data from the company’s systems, creates customized reports and dashboards for analysis and drill-down, and makes reports available to employees through familiar Office system technologies. After deploying an interoperable suite of Microsoft business intelligence technologies, staff members can access, manipulate, and share data using familiar Microsoft Office technologies and dashboards with drill-down capabilities. With reliable business data, MVT is measuring the efficacy of its cost-saving initiatives, motivating employees to perform better, cutting costs, and driving profitability to stay competitive. MVT completed the rollout of its business intelligence solution in December 2009. Today, more than 300 employees in 30 departments use it as an integral part of their work environment.

Benefits to Mesilla Valley Transportation

Mesilla Valley Transportation is using its Microsoft business intelligence solution to gain unparalleled visibility into the business so that it can compete in a tough economy. “We depend on our Microsoft BI solution to maximize performance and productivity,” says Kelley. “It’s empowering our employees to take advantage of current data so we can work together to keep MVT trucks on the road. And the more we are able to deliver reliable business insights to improve performance, the better equipped we are to make the right decisions—decisions that save time and money.” Since deploying its business intelligence solution, MVT has improved information access, increased profitability, and improved employee performance and resource utilization—all without incurring extra work for the IT department. Clearly data cleansing and data mining are tools that trucking companies of all sizes can use to improve their profitability.