Western Express Delivers Efficiency and Cost-saving Opportunities with Advanced Analytics

Outcome

With Western Express' new BI platform, stakeholders can focus on highpriority issues instead of waiting for reports to come in and hunting down data. Teams can spend more time working on higher value projects, increasing business efficiency and the potential of money-saving opportunities. Western Express reports employees save at least two hours each per day with the capabilities of the new platform. According to Geoff Grenier, EVP operations at Western Express, “ibi has allowed us to manage, in real-time, pushed reports to users and management that affect front line decision making. Our BI Team continues to just get better, more efficient, and creative as the project evolves. I cannot be more pleased with how we engaged and utilized this tool, and I look forward to where this will take us in the future.”

Challenge

Truckload carrier Western Express owns and operates six terminals across the continental United States, from California to Connecticut. Its fleet of more than 3,300 power units and 8,100 trailers are 100 percent GPS trackable—providing the company with plenty of data available to analyze. As customer expectations of shipping carriers continue to evolve along with the technology capabilities now available in the market, companies like Western Express have increased urgency to analyze this data for faster, smarter business decision making and meeting customer demands.

In response to these needs, Western Express established a new department for business intelligence (BI). Historically, reporting was run off its operational system by system engineers, and visualizations were created by the software team. As the company grew along with its reporting needs, Western Express knew it needed a dedicated reporting team, so the Business Intelligence department was created.

The greatest challenge the new BI department faced was setting the stage for departmental buy-in, shifting the reporting burden from system engineers and software developers. Engineers needed to focus on system efficiency, and developers needed to focus on creating new applications and tools. The BI department needed a smart analytics tool to shift internal reporting into a streamlined process, managed by the new department.

Transformation

Western Express turned to ibi WebFOCUS® to power its new BI department. The BI team chose this solution because it came equipped with a comprehensive set of capabilities out of the box, including data management, visual discovery, predictive analytics, and powerful visualizations. In one unified platform, the WebFOCUS solution enables the BI team to make datadriven decisions across the enterprise and provide reports, dashboards, and customer-facing applications at scale.

The BI team started by implementing WebFOCUS® in steps, onboarding new teams and departments as requests come in. When a new team requests reporting, a dashboard is created, and the BI department sends them portal links and creates customized training. Each department can receive a unique dashboard, tailored to their needs—and easily usable with the BI department’s training. From there, end users can interact with their reporting tools and create their own content, based on provided data.

Benefits

For Western Express, insights are now available at the touch of a button. Its new analytics solution provides an organized, modern platform for stakeholders to find all reporting specific to their needs. Data that was once emailed via reports is now compiled in one unified place, streamlining business processes. And reporting is accelerated since a whole team of dedicated business intelligence analysts manage all reporting requests. According to Jeffrey Angst, VP of fuel at Western Express, “Business and data analytics has been at the forefront of our success at Western Express, and that especially holds true with the growth of our fuel department. With data coming in from all directions, ibi WebFOCUS® has consolidated our information into easily readable reporting, which saves time and gives our associates the tools they need to make better decisions.”

Western Express users note the unique portal links are a major benefit of using the platform. Stakeholders do not have to dig through their emails, hunting down reports and metrics—now they simply log onto their portal and find information when they need it. And these insights are no longer reserved for higher-level management anymore: data is democratized for all users. People at all levels of the company now benefit from this enhanced data, with 40 percent more employees now having access.