Schneider National Uses Informatica to Streamline Supply Chain Analysis
Schneider National, Inc. is North America's leading provider of premium truckload and intermodal transportation solutions, as well as an international provider of supply chain execution services and technology. The company has a significant presence in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Schneider serves more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies with the broadest portfolio of services in the industry.
Schneider Logistics is a global lead logistics provider that helps customers extract strategic business value from their supply chains in the form of lower distribution costs, reduced inventory, improved customer service, and increased availability to working capital. The company provides Fortune 1000 companies with a range of supply chain solutions, including supply chain engineering, supply chain management technologies and outsourced logistics services. Schneider Logistics is a wholly owned subsidiary of Schneider National Inc.
Schneider National's successful implementation of the Informatica data integration platform has met the company's growing demand for business insight and analysis in the competitive transportation marketplace. Schneider National uses the Informatica data integration platform to integrate and analyze critical transportation and operations data from numerous disparate systems, which has resulted in improved staff productivity, reduced costs, improved supply chain performance and increased competitive advantage.
"The Informatica data integration platform is a key element of our data warehousing and business intelligence initiatives, greatly enhancing Schneider National's ability to leverage supply chain data to reduce costs and improve customer service," said Steve Matheys, CIO of Schneider National. "Leveraging Informatica, we have been able to uncover huge savings by more accurately tracking and procuring customer payments."
Schneider National uses the Informatica data integration platform to help integrate and analyze data from eight disparate systems spread across several business units. The resulting centralized data warehouse allows hundreds of Schneider employees, customers and partners to analyze financial data, carrier maintenance and equipment schedules, and claims and carrier performance.
Since the initial implementation of its data warehouse built upon Informatica in 1999, Schneider National has improved its operational efficiency by gaining valuable insight into critical business processes, such as equipment servicing, customer claims, risk management, and loss prevention.
In addition to using the Informatica data integration platform to build a supply chain analytics solution for its parent company, Schneider Logistics has also built its own data warehouse based upon Informatica software that it uses to increase customer effectiveness.
Pacific Sunwear Improving Efficiency of IT with Scalable Software
Pacific Sunwear knows what's cool. The Anaheim, California-based specialty retailer has grown from a small surf shop to more than 750 stores by always staying ahead of the curve. As an innovator in fashion, the company has helped popularize everyday casual apparel that matches the lifestyle of active teens and young adults. In their approach to business, the same eye for innovation can be seen in the development of the company's state of the art headquarters and network/data center.
"Part of our company culture is keeping up on the latest trends and using that information to make solid business decisions," stated Ron Ehlers, Pacific Sunwear's vice president of Information Services. "Just like we upgraded our hardware infrastructure by adding new servers, fiber and wireless capabilities, we have also upgraded our software and focused more attention to managing the applications more effectively. Survey v.2.1 from Scalable Software, Inc. is exactly what we needed in a software management tool, providing an enterprise view of what software is installed, who is using it – or not, and how best to redeploy those licenses, which ultimately saves us money in software and support costs. As we continue to use the product, we are discovering ways to proactively manage software compliance and improve worker productivity."
Pacific Sunware is using Survey v. 2.1 as a solution to reduce software licensing costs and help improve the overall efficiency of the company's information services department. The Survey product suite offers a range of fast-deploying solutions that provide enterprise-wide information on software installations, while detailing actual usage time spent on applications, e-mail, pre-selected URLs and the Internet.
Centric Software Provides Supplier Network Collaboration for Astrium
Astrium, Europe's leading space company, deployed Centric Software Innovation Management from Centric Software, Inc. for collaboration with its supplier network. Key benefits of the deployment include more innovative designs through leveraging the supply chain early in the process, reduced prototyping costs, and ensuring deadlines are met within budget.
"Maintaining our position at the forefront of the highly competitive space industry requires that we continually innovate our processes and implement solutions that enable us to maximize the capabilities of our entire team," said Bernard Foch, Astrium CAD/CAE group manager. "With Centric Innovation, we significantly increase our competitive advantage by leveraging our supplier network at the onset of new projects, and managing the development process through synchronous and asynchronous collaboration, which enables effective management of project activities."
The ability to manage its geographically dispersed projects and leverage domain expertise throughout the design process with its strategic suppliers were key factors for Astrium when it decided to implement Centric Innovation. Using Centric Innovation's synchronous and asynchronous collaboration capabilities, Astrium was able to partition the design whilst synchronizing developments. This collaborative decision-making forum allows Astrium to incorporate supplier innovations as design information is exchanged throughout the development process. In addition to ensuring that everyone is "on the same page," Centric Innovation also enables the team to collaboratively validate total product functionality, perform numerous what-if analyzes and identify optimal product decisions.
"Manufacturers that truly collaborate with their extended value chain, from the onset of development, gain a significant competitive advantage as they are able to maximize these partners' innovations," said Jack Maynard, Aberdeen Group research director for collaborative enterprise solutions. "Centric Innovation provides this competitive edge, enabling manufacturers to make informed techno-economic decisions and balance their innovation portfolios."
