Data2Logistics Opinion Editorial – Data Mining a Pleasant Shipper Surprise

The more a shipper knows about their transportation current costs and options, the more they’re aware of available savings. The deeper they dig, the richer their reward.

That’s the data mining capsulation of the database discovery realization: awareness of cost-saving abilities amid logistical obligations, and the cost savings achievement associated.

According to global trade group Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM), fewer than 25% of organizations in North America and Europe are currently utilizing captured data as part of their business process. With high ease and low cost associated with utilization of their information, this unawareness is shocking – and costly.

Supply chain and logistics departments are in prime position to benefit by data mining and assessing electronically-captured billing records and their carrier contracts, by utilizing an independent freight bill processing provider, to realize and receive significant savings revealed.

Whatever the shipper’s volume, the more they know about their transportation billing’s accuracy and options to optimize time and cost effective logistics, the easier it is to ship smarter and save. A freight bill processor is able to offer insight capable of saving an average of 5% - 15% annually on shipping costs.

The processes’ backstory: the University of California – Los Angeles states that data mining is the process of analyzing data from different perspectives and summarizing it into useful information – knowledge that can be used to increase revenue, cuts costs, or both. Data mining software is an analytical tool that allows investigation of data from many different dimensions, categorize it, and summarize the relationships identified. Technically, data mining is the process of finding correlations among dozens of fields in large relational databases. Practically, it leads to noticeable shipping savings.

In addition to assessing freight billing accuracy, data mining and subsequent reporting of shipping activity will yield discovery of timely, actionable information that empowers shippers to make the best logistics decisions based on carrier options, along with associated routes, rates and fees. This function also provides a deeper understanding of trends, opportunities, weaknesses and threats. Exploration of pertinent data, in any combination over any time period, enables the operational and financial view of a company’s shipping functional flow, ultimately providing the cost savings.

With data mining, shippers can create reports based on a radius from a ship point, identifying opportunities for service or modal shifts, providing insight regarding carrier usage by lane, volume, average cost per pound, shipment size and service type. Performance can be measured based on overall shipping expenditures, variances from trends in costs, volumes and accessorial charges.

The most effective way to maximize an organization’s transportation information with utilization of data is to form an alliance with a freight bill processor that provides the independent analytical tools and resources, and utilize their unbiased technologies and abilities to make decisions that’ll enable a company to ship smarter and save.

– Data2Logistics, http://www.data2logistics.com/ + http://twitter.com/Data2Logistics