Company Profile
Associated Global Systems (AGS) has been serving customers since 1958. With over 400 locations and a nationwide staff of transportation experts AGS can handle shipments of any size across the US, Canada and in 196 other countries around the world. Source: http://www.agsystems.com/
Customer Need
AGS’s operations and sales teams required several key performance indicators (KPI’s) of shipping data to be summarized and delivered daily via dashboards. The requested dashboards would include visual representations of analytics and the ability to drill down to data details at a transactional level.
Managers at AGS wanted the ability to quickly track key metrics to better understand day-to-day performance as well as gain access to a historical view over a period of weeks or monthsTraditionally, the team at AGS utilized tabular reports using Business Objects Crystal Reports and Web Intelligence.
AGS Goal: A more efficient way to get a consolidated assessment in dashboard format that includes visuals.
Project Scope Summary
Deliver secure and visually-richanalyticsthat will AGS whilefulfilling their requirement of displaying KPIs. The data being captured includes sales and shipments by time, status, location, service type, customer and representative.
Solution Execution
Good BI systems stem from using combinations of standard reporting and augmenting them with dashboards, data visualization and self-service BI solutions.
AGS already possessed operational reporting using Business Objects tools like Crystal Reports and Web Intelligence from a previous Globonix engagement. To meet updated requirements Globonix would now be designing, developing and implementing a dashboard interface to track AGS’s most important business measures and dimensions.
Key Challenge
Consolidation, automation and efficiency in the delivery of key analytics.
The main objective of the project was the automating and consolidating of existing metrics into summary level reports that can be expanded to reveal more granular levels of information.
Results!
Globonix successfully developed a dynamic interface using Business Objects Dashboard tool.
AGS Managers now have the ability to access and review shipment lists and other data at a detailed level by clicking on the summary KPIs. They can further refine their searches by location, date range and other criteria to view summaries and detailed reports.
Lastly, a function to schedule and deliver these reports was made available for automated processing. The AGS Sales Management Group was trained to use the dashboard as well as some of the ad-hoc reporting capabilities.
Today, the time saved from manually preparing reports is now spent on making valuable business decisions. The dashboard application has given AGS better visibility into their operations and sales bottom-line.