Profile
Location: New York, USA | Industry: Logistics Management
What they needed: Real-time, dynamic reporting for clients
About Choice Logistics
Choice Logistics was founded in 1964 as Choice Courier, delivering packages in New York City for accountants, lawyers, and other professional firms. As fax machines and electronic mail systems reduced the need for physical delivery of documents, Choice Logistics moved into the delivery of service parts for technology products.
Choice Logistics
Choice Logistics has grown from a local courier to a world leader in mission-critical service parts logistics. When global companies and third-party providers install products that are used to save lives, conduct financial transactions or secure our borders, they need a plan to deliver critical service parts quickly, often within hours. Choice provides solutions that meet the high-availability requirements of leading companies. Its services and infrastructure enable companies to develop and deliver premium support offerings.
“They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and the visual presentation offered through dashboards provides better insights into the business. Dashboards, for us, were a necessary solution that allowed us to offer our clients the consistency and transparency we sought.”
– Robert Bacchi,
SVP of Information Systems, Choice Logistics
Why Dashboards?
Choice recognized the need for dashboards years ago. Management wanted to drive efficiency by creating a single data presentation layer that leveraged consistent data sources, metrics and KPIs. The company had implemented a data warehousing system, which allowed them to pull data and create manual static reports in Excel. Choice saw the opportunity to build upon the data warehousing system, and provide real-time dynamic reporting to its clients with a dashboard solution. The company decided to implement a solution that would give clients more control and more insights into the areas of their business they wanted to monitor.
The Dashboard Solution
Choice created different dashboards for different purposes. The first dashboard was for internal use and displayed metrics for executives. This dashboard is now being used by the executive team and distributed to account managers and other stakeholders. Robert Bacchi said “We can see our own business trending and that’s been very helpful. It’s like our Bible at this point – it’s our go-to for facts on how the business is performing.”
The second series of dashboards contain information about client spend. These dashboards gave clients graphical representations of trends, so they could see how their spending was trending over 18 months. Clients can now see the effects of any initiatives they have undertaken or identify issues early on that may be candidates for remediation. “We’ve received dozens of emails from clients thanking us for providing a dashboard that was so easy to use and so informative.” said Robert Bacchi.
He also indicated that implementing dashboards has helped to create consistency in the organization, saying:
“As we introduce dashboards into the corporation, not only is there a different way of looking at information, but culturally there is a shift. Everyone was used to pivot tables, everyone had deviations from standard formulas, the variations were damaging. Everyone now is aligned.”
Business Benefits
The corporation is currently working on the next phase of client facing dashboards which focus on delivery performance, and it will also be implementing more dashboards for internal use. Robert Bacchi expects this phase to deliver time and cost savings, saying:
“We have a very inefficient method today of generating static, manual reports on delivery performance for clients. We currently have a team of people that spend the day producing reports for clients. That will all be automated, mostly with dashboards, which gives our clients real-time information and allows us to focus on the trends and opportunities.”
Bacchi feels that there is a new level of confidence in running the business with facts in front of them, and they are beginning to look at data as actionable information. Prior to implementing dashboards, 80% of the analysts time was spent creating reports, and 20% was analyzing the data. With dashboards, the team now spends 80% of their time looking at trends in the data that help to improve clients understanding of their performance and act on opportunities.
Choice has achieved its goal of giving clients better tools and more control over their data and business. Clients see that Choice is a progressive company that is providing useful tools and transparency.
AdvancePro knows that each business is unique, with special challenges and needs. AdvancePro owners have been in the warehousing industry for over 20 years. Our team of business process experts work with you to fully understand your specific workflow and help you identify and remove bottlenecks. AdvancePro gives you the systems and tools to grow your business.
Get in touch with our expert today to organize your inventory with AdvancePro! Click the button below.
