Building a Foundation for Turning KPIs Into Powerful Decisions for Western Express

The Challenge: Data Rich But Information Poor 

For truckload carriers with large fleets, data is central to keeping operations humming. From knowing each truck’s location to tracking efficiency and beyond, data drives a day’s work. Western Express captured vast amounts of data on their fleets, which were rapidly growing. Over the years, a team of highly capable power users were supporting them well by extracting information from their data. However, the loss of their headquarters disrupted this process. Further, the increasingly competitive business environment that the pandemic created was challenging their ability to keep up with information demands.  

The technology team had many pressing obstacles to overcome, such as:  

• Many manual and time-draining processes that dragged down productivity 
• Existing reporting tools that burdened production systems 
• Some key operational metrics that were difficult to monitor 

Since Western Express relied on having near real-time data updates to know crucial details around truck profitability and efficiency, they had no time to waste. They knew they needed a better way to turn their data into information by reducing maintenance burdens and enabling greater agility. Responding to the pandemic’s changing business environment while rebuilding their headquarters and supporting faster, more accurate reporting and analysis was crucial to their future. 

The Strategy: A Robust, Foundational Data Platform  

To start their journey, we analyzed their current data infrastructure to identify what worked and where gaps existed. While Western Express had some direction for an enterprise data warehouse, they now needed help making architectural decisions. The goal was to serve today’s operational information needs  while building a foundation for future growth. To do so, our team began building the data warehouse’s core components. Meanwhile, we worked closely with our client’s data team to ensure that they could deliver key operational reports atop the new warehouse framework.

Our aim was to build from that platform and design:  

• A data warehouse that creates a foundational structure to support future business decisions 
• A system to capture historic data and enable faster, more accurate reporting 

Collaboration was central to our delivery model and success. 

The Western Express team included skilled professionals who could do all end-user visual reporting in-house. So, we created a collaborative process: They supported the analytics, and we built the data platform. Together, we were able to build the solution they needed while optimizing everyone’s capabilities. 

Training enabled them to stand on their own. 

Another goal was to ensure that their data team had the capabilities to support, expand, and enhance their new data platform. So, we delivered training sessions that passed on essential knowledge and documentation to educate their team on the platform. Rather than leave Western Express with a bundle of code, this training helped ensure that they gained the knowledge and confidence to support the platform. 

The Outcome: A Strong Foundation That Drives Momentum for Tomorrow 

In every step, our goal was to leave them better — and positioned for the future. 

Today, Western Express has a reliable foundation that delivers key operational data in near real–time visualizations directly to their business users for analysis. The current platform informs Western Express’ daily operations and empowers them with the ability to grow it as business needs progress and evolve. They’re now able to do time–sensitive tracking of miles by each truck and team, and plan for drivers to get home on schedule. They can also quickly perform analysis on historical data while analyzing crucial operational KPIs to allow for faster, more informed decisions. From the devastation of their headquarters amidst a global pandemic, Western Express has emerged as a competitive, data-driven organization prepared for the future. Now, they can drive business forward, no matter what the road brings their way.