Transport companies have little insight into costs and cost structures. A calculation tool from the Flemish Logistics Institute (VIL) should give them more insight into the profitability of a transport assignment.
VIL's Nacatrans project shows that small and medium-sized transport companies often lack the know-how and resources to build ex post calculation functionalities into their IT systems. "On a periodic basis, the company's results are obviously known but often lack detailed data showing which activities are profitable and which are loss-making," the institute said.
Easily accessible calculation tool
VIL therefore developed a low-threshold calculation tool that should give insight into revenues, costs and where they arise. The tool helps companies make the right choices regarding work, customers to pursue and pricing.
The Nacatrans project involved the hauliers and service providers Andiprim, Avantida, Colfridis, Hertsens, Globis, Group GTS, Magellan Logistics, TDL Group and Trafuco. “Post-transport cost analysis not only confirms gut feelings but sometimes reveals much more
factors that are initially underestimated. Just think of the impact of time
slots on loading and unloading facilities and road congestion,” says project participant Serge
De Wolf of Trafuco in a press release.
Setting up systems for usable data
The VIL points out to the sector that they do need to set up their systems in such a way as to produce data that can be used for business intelligence applications, such as post-calculation. Transport companies are said to have large amounts of data at their disposal, but this raw data is rarely suitable for post-calculation. In more than half of the participating companies, the activities recorded by the onboard computer could not be linked to the transport orders kept in the Transport Management System (TMS). At companies where the data did meet the requirements, the usefulness and added value of the calculation tool could be established.
"Information only becomes really valuable when it can be converted into knowledge, so that this knowledge can be used for adjustment. The analysis with the calculation tool may show, for example, that the services a company performs for a certain customer are not at all as profitable as thought, that unloading or loading at one specific site of a customer always generates higher costs than at other sites. Orange or red flashing lights may also indicate rates that are too low, for example with customers who have been customers from generation to generation, and where rates had been issued from the gut at the time, and only indexed since then," said VIL project leader Peter Lagey.
Editorial LogistiekProfs
