Editor’s Note: The X Factor is a blog series featuring data rockstars and their everyday challenges and solutions.
This blog features Alan McCraney, Director of Business Intelligence, Montgomery Transport.
“Our organization’s culture of analytics is young. We live by feel of the moment when it comes to data,” says Alan McCraney, director of business intelligence at Montgomery Transport, a nationwide, leading flatbed carrier specializing in over-length hauls.
“Every team is broadly affected by it. That being said, the industry — as a whole — is very slow to take action to drive change using data.”
When McCraney joined Montgomery Transport, he acknowledged that it would be an uphill battle to drive internal change revolving around the use of data and analytics to improve business processes. “My job is to decrease costs across departments and increase revenue for the company,” McCraney says.
“When I arrived here, on a scale of one to ten on how we were managing our data, we were at a three. The data management systems were unable to communicate with each other, truck driver metrics weren’t matching up, payroll spreadsheets were unorganized, and closing for month-end was very time consuming.”
To solve these issues in a timely fashion, McCraney recognized the need for a solution that was easy to set up and effective at driving change quickly, something that could free up time for him and his team, while granting his leadership team access to insights to make informed business decisions.
Creating Culture and Solving Problems Through Data + Analytics
Taking advantage of his dynamic background in data and analytics, McCraney was able to save his team 100 hours a week on reporting tasks and was able to instill a data-driven culture that the entire organization took notice of and recognized the immediate value of.
“It’s been a huge breath of fresh air and has made everything run more efficiently,” McCraney says. “I think we have been able to change our organization’s mindset now that we are able to solve problems with greater efficiency. It is a huge change culturally for us.”
McCraney’s X Factor?
McCraney’s “X Factor” lies in having a resource that serves as a single source of
truth at his disposal. “Being able to solve problems using a single source of truth has
been huge for us,” he says. “It helps us show we are more profitable.”
Despite the accomplishments, McCraney knows that it will still be an uphill battle to get the entire trucking industry to approach issues with a data-driven mindset.
“Transportation still has an old-school way of thinking,” McCraney says. “Going forward, the biggest task we hope to solve will be to gauge driver turnover since it is a consistent issue across our industry. We’ll be doing more predictive analytics to help customers and drivers since they both act as our customers.”
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