Trimac Transportation
The Challenge:
Trimac Transportation Services Inc., is a full-service transportation company that focuses on bulk commodities shipping, logistics, brokerage, loading facilities along with shop and wash racks for fleet maintenance. Founded in 1945 and headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Trimac Transportation Services owns and operates about 3,500 trailers and 2,100 tractors which travel about 165 million miles a year.
In the past, the company tried to build its own data warehouse to view metrics and produce reports. The process proved to be time-and-resource consuming and extremely inefficient. The company’s main challenge was to take years of data from different systems and house it in a single system that was easily digestible for all employees.
The Solution:
Trimac scrapped the plan to build its own data warehouse and opted for a solution that would work from day one, right out of the box. The answer was TMW Data Warehouse for transportation data analytics. The software captured data and metrics from the different systems that Trimac employees used and stored it all in one system. Trimac transferred and augmented data from its TMW PowerSuite and TMT platforms, and its mobile communications, HR and financial systems with the data warehouse. Additionally, Data Warehouse was layered with Microsoft’s Power BI solution, which enables people outside of Trimac’s network to access data.
There’s a risk in data that everyone wants to know everything. This wastes time and resources. Data is overwhelming and the value it offers is lost in the process. It was important for Trimac Transportation to reduce excess noise and focus on what it needed to accomplish.
The Result:
The implementation team was able to identify important KPIs to manage a successful change management plan for a reduction in noise. Using good practices, good software and accurate data, Trimac Transportation was able to streamline the data, allowing its users access to what they truly needed to know. Immediately Trimble Transportation’s Data Warehouse met 75% of Trimac’s data capture and storage needs. Trimac management saw instant success in its process quality metrics.
There is a risk in data that everyone wants to know everything. This wastes time and resources. Data is overwhelming and the value it offers is lost in the process. Using good practices, good software and accurate data, Trimac is able to streamline the data, allowing their users access to what they truly needed to know. This focused their vision on things that needed attention which enabled them to improve the business.
Trimac also does an evolutionary process with data through which they add new reports and end ones once they are fixed. The ability to customize Data Warehouse enables that ongoing evolution allowing them to have a system that progresses with them and allows an ongoing focus applicable to the current time and environment.
The counter risk is creating reports and running with them for years. Once the issue is resolved, old reports become stagnant which make them unusable. People start to ignore the information in that case and the warehouse gathers dust. By evolving, Trimac keeps a focus on what's important now. Not five years ago.
In 2017, when the company rolled out TMW Synergize for imaging, all metrics and visualizations were available to monitor progress from the very first day. Through the use of KPIs, metrics and data, Trimac has gained greater visibility into its business operations. Now, the company has a process in place to better manage its data--from capture through reporting to storage.
“We were on the 14th month of trying to build our own data warehouse when we switched to Trimble Transportation. In about a six-week period, we were able to eclipse our progress with Data Warehouse and deliver on what had started out as an arduous task.”
– Kevin Decelles, Manager of IT Architecture, Trimac