LOGISTICS & SUPPLY CHAIN

The world's Top 100 logistics companies are growing by an average of 3.7 percent a year, nearly twice that of the entire market, and are squeezing out smaller competitors. The development is creating a major challenge for small and mid-sized companies. Even though there is good opportunity to offer unique, complex and holistic logistics packages in submarkets and niches, only few of the small and mid-size companies are ahead of the game because of their advantage in clear business insight and data analytics to fine tune their business.


Current Industry Challenges

 
  • No or Minimal tracking on delivery performance
  • Unable to find service level distribution patterns and trends
  • Lack of root cause analysis to identify service level failures
  • No visibility into shipment volume trends
  • Failure in achieving billing accuracy
  • Unable to identify issue patterns in on-time delivery
  • Identifying significant volume changes for agents
  • Cost comparison between vendors in region
  • Cost per pound and Cost per mile trends
  • Fuel surcharge variation comparisons
  • Identifying vendor failure history
  • Bucket and alert aging of invoices
  • Compare Invoice amounts with third party invoice companies
  • Compare invoice Aging with third party invoice companies
  • Prepare Statement of account with ease
  • Handle multiple currencies
  • Get current billing status
  • Disconnect between Cost and sales data
  • Historical currency conversion not available
  • Missing “bill to” data
  • Manual process in basic financial reports(P&L, CF, Balance sheet, etc.)
  • Disconnect between financial data to other functional departments


Impact

 
  • Loosing focus in performance improvement
  • Inability to identify the under-performing functions / bottlenecks
  • Unable to fine-tune service level load distribution
  • Delay in taking corrective actions to fix on-time delivery failures
  • Failure to handle shipment volume trends
  • Difficulty in avoiding billing accuracy issues
  • Missing data points in understating the operations big picture
  • Loosing edge on competition
  • Unable to negotiate price at right time
  • Missing data points to take disciplinary actions
  • Loosing opportunities to control vendor fuel surcharges
  • Failure to identify the trend of cost per mile, cost per pound
  • Redundant effort
  • Paying more to vendors than required
  • Delays following up pending invoices
  • Extensive manual work to consolidate invoice amounts and aging
  • Human dependent and error prone verification system
  • Financial and efficiency loss in billing process
  • No or minimal visibility on forex impact
  • Huge turnaround time to analyze financial KPIs
  • Human dependent and error prone process
  • Financial loss because of missing data
  • Minimal visibility on other functional areas that effect finance
  • Delay in business actions
  • Unable to identify revenue trends and patterns


Solutions

 
  • Shipment counts by region, client, date with benchmark alert system
  • Vendor-facing and customer-facing Service Issues/Failures
  • On Time Delivery with Drill down to waybill level
  • Revenue/GP by customer, mode and lane
  • Service Level distribution
  • Activity-based costing
  • Billing Accuracy
  • Cost comparison between competitive vendors
  • Volume trends
  • Service failures and on-time delivery patterns
  • Cost per pound trend on pickup and delivery agents
  • Cost per mile for Truck load carriers
  • Benchmarks and Alert system
  • Immediate cost savings on vendor payments
  • Improve customer satisfaction by reducing service issues
  • Huge reduction in manual effort
  • Detect opportunities to reduce cost per pound and cost per mile
  • Precise data points to take disciplinary actions
  • Aging invoices report by dynamic buckets
  • Automatic comparison of Aging and Invoice amounts with third party invoice service providers
  • Statement of account
  • Invoices in multiple currencies
  • Drilldown to invoice level
  • Profit and Loss report
  • Balance sheet
  • Cash flow statement
  • Customer revenue analysis
  • Cost and sales consolidation
  • Currency conversion and history
  • Ability to fix “Bill to” information
  • Shipment count and revenue analysis


Benefits

 
  • Clear view of underperforming functions and bottlenecks
  • Ability to fine-tune service level load distribution
  • Fix on-time delivery failures without delays
  • Complete insight on operational issues
  • Detailed volume trends and patterns
  • Achieve billing accuracy
  • All operational KPIs aligned with company objectives
  • Remove or reduce manual efforts in day to day billing functions
  • Proactive alerts to provide lead time to fix anomalies with third party invoice service providers
  • Quicker turnaround time to client queries on billing statements
  • Optionally, ability for customer to view his billing statements online without requesting
  • Timely actions on aging invoices
  • Forex conversion at finger tips
  • Work reduction, performance and accuracy gain in billing efforts
  • Reduction in manual effort
  • Ability to address the issue before losing control
  • Quicker turnaround time on financial questions and research reports
  • Minimize loss of money due to missing data
  • Gain financial control over all departments
  • Informed financial decisions