DTDC gets business back on track with a new data culture
Unified data from across the business for one single source of truth
The business returned to and exceeded pre-COVID businesses in nine months, greatly supported and influenced by new data insights
175+ senior managers from across the business are using nearly 75+ dashboards to drive decision making, cost reductions, and service improvements
DTDC (www.dtdc.in) is on a mission to remain India’s preferred express parcel service provider. Now in its thirty-first year, the distribution and logistics business has more than 500+ Indian branches, 10,000+ employees supporting 11,800+ franchisees and handles nearly 400,000+ shipments daily to more than 12,000 postcodes.
With Tableau, DTDC has also built a data culture to navigate through the impacts of COVID-19 & come up with new business opportunities and improve its serviceability across India.
DTDC kickstarted its transformation journey around 5-6 years ago with an objective to create a multi faceted organization relying on the latest technology trends and service offerings. A key element of that was to assimilate data, promoting ‘Data Democracy’ of relevant information. The pandemic accelerated the transformational program, bringing to the fore the need for a single source of truth & deeper insights of data through which agility, speed of execution could be enhanced multiple times and DTDC could take relevant decision on matters of cost and profitability.
We have had created a lot of dashboards to keep everyone focused on our goal, and when things went wrong, we were able to drill down into the data to understand why, immediately.
“We felt that unless we could put clear operational data into people’s hands, it would become difficult to ensure that the business moves as a connected whole,” says Mrinal Chakraborty, Executive Vice President, Information Technology and Innovation, DTDC Express Ltd.
DTDC, in record time moved its data to the cloud with Google Cloud Platform (GCP BIGQ) and then added on Tableau Cloud for an end-to-end analytics solution. Team Computers, an Indian IT consulting firm, supported the rollout of Tableau to DTDC’s entire business management team.
Unified data for a unified team
A key benefit of DTDC’s data transformation is that everyone is now on the same page when it comes to performance. Chakraborty shared that this was especially valuable with many people still working remotely and meeting virtually.
“When you are working in a decentralized environment, it is important that how everyone is looking at the same data and that there’s no confusion or debate about on Availability/Authenticity/Quality of data,” Chakraborty. “Tableau has given us this certainty and helped to unify the team around shared goals & key performance indicators.”
Last year, one of these goals was a return to pre-COVID profitability which DTDC was able to achieve in just nine months. Chakraborty credits this in part to Tableau implementation and thus greater visibility of performance.
The learning curve was easy, and now everyone starts their day looking at Tableau. They are looking at the data to see how they are tracking against their targets and to understand what they need to do for the rest of the Day/Month or Quarter. It has been a quantum jump from static spreadsheet reporting to a whole new way of using our data.
Citing the example of delivery delays, Chakraborty said they were able to plot data onto a map of India to understand the relative spread of the problem in a spatial scenario. In addition, satisfying the objective of data democracy deliveries which were previously monitored by operations alone were now available for all senior managers to track and take tactical and strategic decisions in order to support a better service performance. With Tableau, they can slice the information by location, product, and different service parameters.
DTDC also has dashboards to track other performance metrics such as Shipment Bookings and Customer escalations (CRM Cases). By viewing these daily, senior management can tap into trends and derive actionable insights to support the team in exploring newer sources of revenue while providing exceptional customer experience to our existing customers.
DTDC now plans to continue on its data journey , to ensure complete adoption of existing dashboards and information while exploring the forecasting and predictive aspects of Analytics Most of DTDC’s data is structured, which will make it easy to apply machine learning and AI in the future.
“The visual aspects of Tableau have helped to make our data more understandable and meaningful, and we are all now dancing to the same tune and seeing the same analysis,” said Chakraborty. “My personal plan and vision is to bring more predictability into our operations, and I’m keen to see that side of Tableau.”
