“This was like a data-driven therapy session for our entire team.””
These words came from the mouth of a VP of Transportation for a refrigerated trucking company based in the Midwest.
Fulton Analytics’ team of data experts led a small Data Strategy engagement to navigate some challenging conversations around cultivating a data driven culture in a complex organization.
Fulton Analytics spent two weeks meeting with various business and technology stakeholders - to learn the business and build a roadmap to data driven success.
Like any good data journey, our team was in it for the long haul.
Data Going Everywhere
With trucks traveling across the country - this Midwest trucking company had experienced rapid growth over the span of a few short years.
Faced with the dual pressures of swift growth and the challenges brought about by the pandemic, the company embarked on a journey to improve key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to enhance decision-making.
Up-Shifting Technology
Our data modernization efforts included leveraging their existing Microsoft licenses to upshift their technology. The current data integration processes were heavily manual, required pulling data extracts from an AS400 transportation systems, and compiling Excel spreadsheets for monthly reporting. Other business units were using Tableau as a datamart to create an export to Excel.
These data siloes were creating challenges with data integrity and building a trusting data culture. It was clear the business was evolving, the culture was changing, and they needed a modern technology stack to drive their data transformation.
Power Up The Dashboard
After the initial data strategy assessment, our team of data experts started building a Trucking Operations Dashboard in Microsoft Power BI. Our team also began building a strong foundation by building a modern data fabric with Microsoft technologies. Our team built a custom Azure Data Lakehouse and automated the data integration of all the companies’ core systems into a central data repository.
After a handful of weeks, our team rolled out a real-time Power BI dashboard with KPI and Metrics for the executive team to better run the business. The dashboard included KPI such as:
Total Miles, Revenue Per Mile, Empty Trucking Miles
Total Loads, Load Details, Revenue per Load
Route Efficiency, Fleet Efficiency, Idle Trucks/Drivers
Driver Performance, Turnover, and Retention
Truck Tracking by location, speeding, geospatial mapping
Our Data Consultants also worked with the business stakeholders to define common data definition, business logic, and data standards across the business. Having this alignment allowed us to build a centralized data model in Power BI (semantic model). This empowered the company with a single source of truth and real-time automation.
Pump The Brakes
A Big Rig can’t stop on a dime and change directions. Neither can most organizations.
However, this trucking company was committed to organizational change from Day 1. The company had complete buy-in from executive leadership and was committed to their journey to data success.
Countless executive leaders across the company worked openly and collaboratively with our Data Consultants to push forward a solution and overcome any obstacles.
Everyone could see the sun over the horizon and was committed to the data roadmap.
Time To Go Fishing
The saying goes, “teach a man to drive a truck, and he’ll eat for the rest of his life.” Or something along those lines. One of the most critical parts of the project was the collaborative knowledge transfer throughout the engagement. Fulton Analytics was intentional and committed to teaching this company “how to fish”. The organization in turn was able to build out a robust data team to continue the progress.
Keep On Trucking
Truckers make the world go around. These data-driven insights have allowed the organization to drive efficiencies and ultimately make life easier for those behind the wheel.
This organization plans to keep on trucking with Power BI, and their data transformation journey has already positioned them as a clear industry leader.
Robert Gerads is the CEO of Fulton Analytics, a data analytics strategy and consulting firm based in St. Paul, MN.
He is also the Founder of the Twin Cities Power BI Meetup.