Odyssey Logistics & Technology Transforms Customer Intelligence with Qlik

Radnor, PA. – Qlik®, a leader in data analytics, today announced Odyssey Logistics & Technology (Odyssey), a global logistics solutions provider, has selected Qlik for its proactive customer intelligence data analysis, alerting and insights needs. Odyssey provides a range of innovative technologies to deliver thorough high-value logistics strategies, including managed logistics services, intermodal, international transportation management and trucking.

Odyssey is leveraging a variety of Qlik offerings, including Qlik Sense and Qlik GeoAnalytics, to expand its business intelligence services, partnering with customers through analytics to proactively manage the complex and conflicting issues that are inherent in logistics.

“Our customers expect freight to be delivered on time, every time. Conditions and resource variability, from weather to truck availability to fuel costs, makes it critical that we proactively analyze live data, update customers regularly and avoid the unexpected,” said Joe Easley, Qlik Administrator at Odyssey Logistics & Technology. “With Qlik we are uncovering detailed insights by blending internal and external data, mitigating issues ahead of time and meeting our customers’ demanding needs with confidence.”

Easley added that one of the most significant issues Odyssey deals with is weather, which can range from ice and snow to rain, flooding, wildfires, fog or dust storms. “Even though origin and destination are fixed points for planned deliveries, weather can be different at each site, impacting transit and delivery times,” said Easley. “Odyssey initially managed weather issues through a manual process, with operational teams reviewing National Weather Service alerts, reports and emails. Our teams spent hours refining searches based on specific geo areas, augmenting with Google Maps to configure details and only then determining if there was a real problem that required action.”

Through Qlik, Odyssey has built a connection to the National Weather Service CAPS Atom feed, refined alerts down to five transportation relevant categories and used Qlik GeoAnalytics to aggregate and model every alert. Client data was brought into Qlik Sense from the live system to create proactive alerts on any individual shipment based on origin and destination weather variables (e.g. a refrigerated shipment and heat index issues.)  Dashboards provide actionable data for internal client teams and customers alike to avoid issues and ensure delivery.

Odyssey has blended ERP data and its proprietary TMS system data in Qlik to feed the Odyssey Visibility Portal, which now provides customers both on the fly analytics and custom content that is pre-curated per customer by the internal development team. Data can be refreshed at whatever cadence customers want based on use case, making data on-demand vs. on-request in one interactive dashboard vs. double digit static reports.

In the next 12-18 months Odyssey will be integrating even more external data such as U.S. Department of Energy weekly fuel index costs, Bureau of Labor Statistics on labor rate fluctuations and the impact on shipping rates, and World Bank data on import/export ratios, all of which will expand a customer’s understanding of global and regional issues that affect their businesses. Odyssey also will be blending data to bring deeper insights to customers such as real-time truck tracking with risk management (road conditions, weather, driver time on road) to create a delivery risk index. 

“Using Qlik has helped Odyssey avoid data arrogance, which we define as relying on only internal data to make decisions. Through Qlik’s ability to blend external data with our own, we’ve quickly scaled applications and expanded the platform’s value with actionable insights that can be made available in minutes for intelligent decision making,” said Easley.