Data Warehouses and Business Intelligence Drives Logistics

Data warehouses are centralized data repositories that integrate data from various systems, applications, and sources. The data warehouse is an environment separate from the operational systems, and it is completely designed to provide for analytical and ad-hoc reporting, queries, and data analysis.  Because the data warehouse is in an isolated environment, queries, data mining, and analysis can be performed without any impact on the operational systems.

A data warehouse helps solve the ongoing problem of pulling data from operational systems quickly and efficiently, and converting that data into information. This, in turn, allows the business to make fact-based decisions quickly and with confidence.

This 'single version of the truth' enables business users and decision makers to have access to data from many different sources and they can query data directly with less IT support.  When business users can generate reports on their own, they can spend more time on data analysis. 

As a 3PL, we value the data that drives business and customer relationships.  The data warehouse, and business intelligence that it offers, provides the ability to answer questions (and even think up new questions) by turning the massive amount of data from operational systems into visible, actionable, and easy to understand information. 

Logistics providers must be poised and ready to analyze current and long-term trends as well as alerting clients to opportunities and problems.  The value of having information 'at your fingertips' gives continuous feedback on the effectiveness of decisions, processes, and ultimately, the health of your business. 

Benefits of data warehouse for logistics providers include:

• Access data from multiple sources
• Business intelligence
• Enhanced query ability/data mining
• Timely access to data
• Improved data quality and consistency in reporting