We cannot hide from it anymore; working data driven is getting more and more important. We see that a lot of entrepreneurs in the logistics industry follow up on this development. Many already capture their information digitally, but are still struggling with converting the data to workable information. For example, data is often exported to Microsoft Excel, To extract data and turn it into information. Working in all kinds of DIY Excel sheets is, however, very sensitive to errors and it is unlikely that these sheets always have the latest information when you use them.  Another option to handle your data is to use an external BI solution, but for many entrepreneurs this is too big of a step and creating the right dashboards is too difficult. In other words, you need to work data driven, but how can you use your data in your advantage?

Take control of your data

With the right tools, you will benefit from the correct use of digital information in no time. That’s because by analyzing the present knowledge (or data), you can find the bottlenecks in your processes and anticipate on them. Besides, it can help you to see into the future: how many orders are planned? And how many pallets are released? Important questions, to which the answer helps you to keep control of your logistic activities. To answer these questions, Boltrics introduced two modules in Dynamics Business Central: Analytics Essentials and Analytics Advanced.

Gain insights in your data directly

With the Analytics modules in 3PL Dynamics, you can easily and quickly analyze your data. With Analytics Essentials, you can set up dashboards directly in 3PL Dynamics, without any external tools. These dashboards help you to get insights into your data and therefore operate and make decisions based on correct and realtime data. With the module Analytics Advanced (formerly known as Power BI) you can analyze your most important KPIs via Microsoft’s Power BI extension, with dashboards Boltrics has set up for logistic service providers. In this blog, we dive deeper in the possibilities of Analytics Essentials.

Analytics Essentials

In the standard set of the Essentials module, multiple dashboards are developed to display data in a workable way. From this data, you can zoom into the underlying and more detailed information. Below, we explain a selection of the available dashboards.

Workload dashboards

First of all, you can gain insights in the workload in your warehouse, per customer or per employee. With the help of these dashboards, you can display per action code how many tasks are open, how many employees are active and what the performance is of these tasks. Furthermore, you can easily see how many pick orders are still open per customer, how many coli must be picked and how many employees are working for that specific customer. Data concerning planned or completed trips is also quickly displayed. Therefore, you can easily get an answer to questions as: what is the latest status of the trip? How many carriers are expected? Or how many orders are combined in this trip? Finally, you do not only have insights into your customers or trips. You can also map the progress and activity of your warehouse employees with the dashboards in the module.

Customs

Do you have customs activities? Or will you have them in 2021? Then you can easily dive into your data and optimize your business processes with the dashboards focused on customs in Analytics Essentials. With the module, you can for example display the stock levels and linked documents per customs file.

VAL activities

As a logistics service provider, you can also provide extra activities for your customers. For example, you may take care of repacking your customers’ goods or execute quality checks for returns. What your VAL activities may be, with the new module you can easily see the progress of the activities, the waste, the costs, the revenue, the margin, the number of hours and more, per document or output line.

More information about Analytics Essentials

Do you want to learn how to add fields to different dashboards in the module yourself? In our upcoming how to blog, we will explain how to set up these dashboards. Are you curious about the possibilities of Analytics Essentials? Or are you interested in what the Analytics modules can do for you? Mail to marketing@boltrics.nl and discover how data can help your organization.