Varsity Logistics has announced it is offering new shipping analytics modules that integrate with its core shipping software/TMS (transportation management system) product modules--ShipSoft-Parcel and ShipSoft-Freight. These analytics modules provide Varsity customers with access to and visibility into detailed, historical shipping data. The modules enable the development of valuable decision-support information that can significantly reduce transportation carrier costs and improve shipping performance, the company says.
The first level of shipping analytics is Varsity's TransData shipping/transportation datamart, which maintains historical values of approximately 100 different data fields crucial to analyzing shipping patterns and transport carrier costs. TransData extracts and transforms transactional shipping data from the Varsity shipping software, maintaining a consistent history of data elements down to the level of individual shipments. TransData resides on the IBM i (AS/400) platform and can be accessed using any tool capable of ODBC/JDBC access (Query for iSeries or DB2 Web Query, even Microsoft Access or Business Objects Crystal, as well as many others). With TransData installed, Varsity customers can get critical, cost-savings data (without having to allocate many weeks of expensive programming time to get the data needed for each specific report requested).
The second level of shipping analytics is ShipView Plus, a complete package of specialized analysis and presentation tools that comes fully integrated with TransData. Developed by Varsity in collaboration with New Generation Software (NGS), ShipView Plus takes shipping analytics to a whole other level, the company says. Accessible via a Web browser, the ShipView Plus toolset includes shipping and transportation-specific dashboards, GIS data visualizations, and slice-and-dice/drill-down information views. ShipView Plus also allows for more traditional reporting outputs as well output into almost any user-preferred file format (including Microsoft Excel and Access and most universal delimited formats). With ShipView Plus, shipping logistics and transportation managers can have cost-saving, performance-enhancing information at their fingertips, without ever having to call-in the IT department (support which is always costly and sometimes not readily available).
Shipping Analytics enable Varsity customers to gain an information advantage in carrier negotiations (a position that can translate into significant cost reductions). In addition, metrics can be tracked and trends and patterns can be analyzed to uncover opportunities to change operations to further reduce costs and improve shipping performance.
According to Andrew Karpie, Varsity's senior director of Marketing, "The majority of our customers have not been able to individually make the very large investments necessary to transform transactional shipping data into consistent and usable historical data or to further transform the data into relevant decision-support information that can have major positive impact on shipping costs and performance.
Varsity's new Shipping Analytics modules now make getting to that information-and the cost reductions and performance improvements-not only feasible, but also economically attractive. The Shipping Analytics module licenses are priced to be economically accessible to any sized organization that uses Varsity's shipping software."
The first releases of TransData© and ShipView Plus© are now ready to be licensed and installed. Installation is simple and can normally be completed with Varsity's assistance in just a few hours. No IBM i hardware upgrades of any kind are typically required.
About Varsity Logistics, Inc.
Founded in 1989, Varsity Logistics, Inc. is the leader in IBM System i-based shipping/transportation management systems. Varsity's software supports the full spectrum of parcel, LTL, truckload, and rail shipments, including rate shopping, manifesting, packing, international shipments, and invoice auditing. Deployed in more than 1,100 distribution sites, Varsity helps North American organizations of all sizes improve shipping efficiencies, increase customer satisfaction, and reduce shipping expense. Varsity is based in San Francisco, California (www.varsitylogistics.com) and is a fully owned subsidiary of Constellation Software, Inc., Toronto, Canada (TSX:CSU).
About NGS (New Generation Software, Inc.)
With over 20,000 iSeries users across the globe, NGS has been an industry leader since 1982 in developing high performance, field-proven business intelligence and financial management software for midrange users. Both NGS-IQ business intelligence and the Concert Series financial management system are recognized by IBM as IBM ServerProven solutions. NGS is an Advanced Member of IBM PartnerWorld and a member of the System i Initiative for Innovation. (www.NGSI.com)
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