SCG’s growth to one of North America’s largest distribution networks called for more sophisticated tracking of Key Performance Indicators to drive performance. “Effective technology not only has to help you operate in the freight business but also help you manage the business of freight,” commented Kathi Laughman, Vice President - SCG, Business Systems and Services. SCG defined their corporate goals they knew were most critical for company success and went in search of a technology partner to help them:

• Reduce empty miles to below 5%.
• Increase mileage covered by owner-operators from 20% to 80%
• Improve on-time dispatches and performance throughout the network .
• Gain recognition for superior customer service
  

After evaluating a number of vendors, SCG chose TMW Systems for their innovative approach and strategic leadership. "We didn't want a company that needed us to tell them what to do. We wanted one that was knowledgeable within this industry and could tell us.” Today, SCG uses TMWSuite®, leveraging ResultsNow by TMW™, The Dawg™ and other features to translate corporate goals to every level of the company. 

 Another factor in SCG’s choice was the fact that TMWSuite is designed for optimum integration, which offers two additional benefits. First, it provides neutrality, giving SCG the widest range of options in best-of-breed technologies. In addition, the ease of integration makes it simple to keep a large organization on the same page. “Everything is designed to mirror systems that are widely known such as Windows so the learning curve is short,” added Laughman. 

TMW solutions implemented for SCG to meet its original goals include: 

•  Empty miles. ResultsNow tracks empty miles, and The Dawg “barks” when there’s an exception, so a decision can be changed before it becomes a problem. “When you have the volume of transactions we do, you have to be exception-based,” said Laughman. “With TMW we expose exceptions and prioritize them so we can manage the impact to our operations and service to our customers.” 
• Driver recruiting and retention. SCG utilized Order Scheduler to build customized trips that recruiters could offer to potential owner-operators. Once drivers joined SCG, profiles were at dispatchers’ fingertips, helping them effectively manage to a particular owner-operator’s preferences. 
• On time delivery. SCG uses ETA Manager with TotalMail® to track on-time status and trigger back-up planning when necessary. This system offers operational flexibility because TotalMail integrates with a QUALCOMM system or any communication system or GPS an owner operator has. The company can even bring a driver into the system with just D2Link™ mobile communications software and a phone. 
• Customer service. SCG has just launched a new Web site using TMW’s eStat®, which offers customers the capability for end-to-end transactions online, including creating and retrieving bills of lading, getting quotes, tendering shipments or loads, tracking shipments and service and pulling account reports. The TMW advantage? A customer can decide which parts they want as self-service and which they want to interface on. Adds Laughman, “Letting customers define what meets their needs is a real driver for customer satisfaction. TMW doesn’t force people to wrap their process around a technology. TMW lets them build processes around what they need and want.”
  
  

A fully integrated TMW system has helped deliver results on all of SCG corporate goals. Says SCG’s Laughman, “We attribute our results to the fact that TMW gives us planning tools that operate with an action bias the way we do.”

• Empty miles have been reduced to 4.3%. That’s well below the company’s 5% goal and the industry average of 10-15%.
• Owner-operators are now covering approximately 80% of scheduled system miles. In addition, SCG’s turnover rate has held steady at less than 30%, considered low in the industry.
• On-time delivery is up to 98+% for over 90,000 segments annually.

Future Plans
SCG plans to mine the flexibility of TMWSuite, developing and tracking new KPIs as company goals are achieved and new strategic directions are set. Says Laughman, “TMW excels against the competition because we can decide what’s important today, this week, month, quarter and TMWSuite can be easily reconfigured to our new objectives. TMW puts a lot of control in our own hands.”

“It’s not enough anymore to deliver information. You have to deliver leveraged information. TMW does that effectively. We use TMW to collect all this data and present that data in a way that it becomes a business tool and not just an operations tool.”

 Kathi Laughman
Vice President - SCG The Select Carrier Group
Business Systems and Services.