Section IV. BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS FOR IMPROVED TRANSPORTATION AND LOGISTICS PERFORMANCE
Steps 14- 16 deal with "after shipment" movement activities associated with freight bill cash settlement, post-audit, and business intelligence data mining to determine areas of non-compliance associated with the tactical and execution phases of transportation management. Information mined from data associated with tactical and execution activities provides the basis for reports for transportation supervisors and managers plus top management on how well plans, policies and procedures are being performed.
How well trading partners are performing also is reviewed to determine root causes for improving processes. Variations from budgets and service goals provide management with opportunities to improve future performance and more productive use of committed resources. Information at this stage is also needed to fine tune analytical models both strategically and tactically to further enhance performance. Planning models need good, accurate and relevant data. When firms initially implement planning models, data is often severely lacking so default data is used to start driving the models. As good data becomes available, that data is fed into these models to finely calibrate model inputs to make the outputs more valuable to planners and operational personnel. Team Group B has major responsibilities for data mining and analysis and providing top management and operations with data for future planning.
Often outsourced services, such as freight bill payment services and post-audit services, are used to provide much of the information for planning and process improvement. Action Items identified in this section address post-shipment analysis and often provide "quick wins" that management is so eager for in cost reduction.