Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/678459
COMMERCIAL CARRIER JOURNAL | MAY 2016 47 Prescriptive analytics gives the front line the power to act BY AARON HUFF T hree years ago, Mesilla Valley Transportation (CCJ Top 250, No. 78) started having problems with a customer's requirement for electronic data inter- change. "The customer was getting very upset that our EDI scores were low," says Mike Kelley, chief information offi - cer for the Las Cruces, N.M.-based fl eet with 1,350 power units. The customer, one of MVT's largest, expected to receive EDI transactions for pickup-and-delivery appointments prior to arriving and departing from shipper and consign- ee locations, and to receive EDI status updates within two hours of arrivals and departures. MVT already had the technology to send EDI messag- es, but further improvements were needed to make the process timelier. Its mobile computing platform was sending position updates every 15 minutes to its transportation manage- ment software system, which in turn sent EDI messages directly to the customer. But manual steps had to be taken when exceptions occurred, making it diffi cult to meet the two-hour deadline consistently. When a truck arrived at a shipper or consignee, the mobile computing platform recognized that the vehicle had entered a marked location and prompted the driver to confi rm the arrival. Drivers could ignore that message, which led to a delay in an EDI message. They also might have entered the wrong trailer number into a form before leaving the shipper, causing another delay in the EDI transaction for the departure. Likewise, customer service representatives or dispatch- ers might change an order number in the TMS and pro- long the EDI process. "We started by trying to get the drivers and dispatch- ers to do the computer work, and that continued to fail," Kelley says. In July 2015, MVT created a process to automate the workfl ow to meet its customer's needs more consistent- ly and be rewarded with more business. Within three months, the customer's EDI score for MVT increased from 60 percent to more than 90 percent. Kelley says that as more MVT customers ask for more