CASE STUDY - PITT OHIO EXPRESS Delivers Results with Improved Customer Data: Transportation Company Uses DataFluxdfPower Studio to Power Customer Data Integration, Turning Its Improved Database into a Competitive Advantage
Commentary by Justine Russo, Manager of Market Research and Business Intelligence, PITT OHIO EXPRESS
The Business
PITT OHIO EXPRESS is a Pittsburgh-based transportation company that handles less than-truckload shipping throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes states. With 21 terminals in its service area, PITT OHIO makes more than 9,500 daily deliveries to more than 14,000 unique locations.
The Challenge
On any given day, PITT OHIO processes 9,000–11,000 new invoices. Each invoice is entered manually, in a process that has historically given greater precedence to entry speed than to data quality. While understandable from an operational perspective, this rapid-fire data entry approach eventually created a significant duplicate data problem for the company. Each variation in customer name or address information would create a new customer record, meaning that a single entity could be represented by dozens of records in the database system.
With this duplicate data, accurately managing customer information was a critical concern. In an industry where swift turnaround time was crucial, the requirement to dedicate valuable resources to the time-consuming administrative task of managing these customer records had a very real impact on the company’s efficiency.
The DataFlux Solution
PITT OHIO selected DataFlux dfPower Studio to complete its customer data integration initiative. The platform’s intuitive interface allowed PITT OHIO’s business users (those employees whose job performance was tied to the integrity of information) to take responsibility for managing customer data.
DataFlux dfPower Studio allowed PITT OHIO to discover and address problematic data and to verify and merge customer records. Business users built data improvement workflows quickly and logically with the innovative job flow builder.
With dfPower Studio’s fuzzy logic matching capabilities, PITT OHIO was able to reconcile customer records, identify duplicates, and reduce these multiple instances into a single master record.
“Now, with the new, consolidated view of our customer data, PITT OHIO is able to provide more targeted service, identify our most valuable customers, and deliver competitive value in return.” –Justine Russo, Manager of Market Research and Business Intelligence, PITT OHIO EXPRESS
The Results
PITT OHIO began the project with a goal of a nine-month implementation schedule. With DataFlux’s flexibility and intuitive interface, deployment and learning time were significantly shorter than scheduled. This project, scheduled for nine months, was completed in just five.
“PITT OHIO began the deployment with an expectation of an ongoing 95 percent data consolidation rate,” said Justine Russo, manager of market research and business intelligence. “DfPower Studio has helped us surpass this goal, giving us a consistent 99 percent consolidation rate.” Before implementing DataFlux, PITT OHIO’s customer data management had been consuming significant amounts of time from the IT department and multiple business users. After using dfPower Studio to increase the quality of customer data, PITT OHIO was able to manage this information with only a single business user.
PITT OHIO was able to turn its improved database into a competitive advantage. By refining its address information, the company was able to offer its customers more efficient shipping times and more advanced logistics than its competitors. “Now, with the new, consolidated view of our customer data,” Russo said, “PITT OHIO is able to provide more targeted service, identify our most valuable customers, and deliver competitive value in return.”
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