In Logistics, Data is the New Oil
Not too long ago, logistics companies competed on the basis of service, delivery, and price. While those factors matter more than ever, so does the level by which logistics providers deliver data-driven insights to their customers. Those that integrate, organize, analyze, leverage, and deliver data to outmaneuver their competition are the ones who win in this new marketplace.
.jpg)
Winmore’s Data Mart
In the early days of business software, companies had to choose, “Do I want software architected for the activities of my business … or do I want software that will allow me to analyze the data through a broad range of integrations and insights?” Rarely could you find software that provided both.
At Winmore, you don’t have to choose. Every Winmore customer has the option of activating the Winmore Data Mart for their business, which is a separate database configured for the highly demanding integration and analytics required from today’s forwarders, brokers, and carriers.
Using the Winmore Data Mart, logistics companies can import data from operating systems or TMS software, or even sources outside their business, such as Sonar from FreightWaves. Doing so provides a powerful data source for leading business intelligence tools such as Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, Domo, and others.
Embedded Analytics
Sometimes, however, deep integrations and rich insights may be overkill for tasks in your commercial process; this is why Winmore is configured to support embedded analytics. This means that as a task is assigned to a team member in Winmore, you can configure a BI report to be displayed as the individual completes his or her task at hand.
For example, if your Winmore workflow assigns a task to a pricing analyst to run a comparison of last season’s award vs. actuals, think of how much more quickly the analyst will close the task by having an interactive report furnished alongside the task details.
Winmore’s Flexible Data Model
Logistics requires groups to work together as they go about their business, qualifying and responding to tenders, onboarding shipper customers, preparing for QBRs, and update SOPs. This not only requires workflows for groups, not individuals, but also a flexible data model.
With such a data model, every brokerage, carrier, or forwarder can use the core data elements that are configured in the Winmore platform such as shipper, contact, trade lane, tender, and so forth, but then they can configure their own data elements—we call them “Record Types”—to model any part of their commercial operations.
Finally, these data elements then can be configured to move through a group workflow. For example, the data element—RFP—moves through the qualification and response workflow with stages and tasks assigned to your pricing and commercial teams. This innovative approach gives logistics companies the ability to tackle virtually any commercial process.