Question

DRIVING ARI FLEET MANAGEMENT WITH REAL-TIME ANALYTICS Automotive Resources International, better known as simple ARI, is the world's largest privately-held company for vehicle fleet management services. ARI is headquartered in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey and has 2,500 employees and offices throughout North America, Europe, the UK and Hong Kong. The company manages more than 1,000,000 vehicles in the US, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Europe. Businesses that need vehicles for shipments (trucks, vans, cars, ships, and rail cars) may choose to manage their own fleet of vehicle or they may outsource fleet management to companies such as ARI which specialize in these services. ARI manages the entire life cycle and operation of a fleet of vehicles for its customers, from up-front specification and acquisition to resale, including financing, maintenance, fuel management, and risk management services such as driver safety training and accident management. ARI also maintains six call centers in North America that operate 24/7, 365 days a year to support customers' drivers, and suppliers who expect access to real-time actionable information. Providing this information has become increasingly challenging. Operating a single large commercial vehicle fleet generates high volumes of complex data, such as data on fuel consumption, maintenance, licensing and compliance, A fuel transaction, for example, requires data on state taxes paid, fuel grade, total sale, amount sols, and time and place of purchase. A simple brake job and preventive maintenance checkup generates dozens of records for each component that is serviced. Each part and service performed on a vehicle is tracked using American Trucking Association codes. ARI collects and analyzes over 14,000 pieces of data per vehicle. Then multiply the data by hundreds of fleets, some with up to 10,000 vehicles, all operating simultaneously throughout the globe, and you'll have an idea of the enormous volume of data ARI needs to manage, both for itself and for its customers. ARI provided its customers with detailed information about their fleet operations, but the type of information it could deliver was very limited. For example, ARI could generate detailed reports on line-item expenditures, vehicle purchases, maintenance records, and other operational information presented as simple spreadsheets, charts, or graphs, but it was not possible to analyze all the data to spot trends and make recommendations. ARI was able to analyze data customer by customer, but it was not able to aggregate data across its entire customer base. For instance, if ARI was managing a pharmaceutical company's vehicle fleet, its information systems could not benchmark that fleet's performance against others in the industry. That type of problem required too much manual work and time, and still didn't deliver the level of insight management thought was possible. What's more, in order to create reports, ARI had to go through internal subject matter experts in various aspects of fleet operations, who were called "reporting power users". Every request for information was passed to these power users. A request for a report would take 5 days to fill. If the report was unsatisfactory, it would go back to the report writer to make changes. ARI's process for analyzing its data was extremely drawn out. In mid-2011, ARI implemented SAP BusinessObjects Explorer to give customers the enhanced ability to access data and run their own reports. SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is a business intelligence tool that enables business users to view, sort and analyze business intelligence data. Users search through data sources using an iTunes-like interface. They do not have to create queries to search the data and results are shown with a chart that indicates the best information match. The graphical representation of results changes as the user asks further questions of the data. In early 2012, ARI integrated SAP BusinessObjects Explorer with HANA, SAP's in-memory computing platform that is deplorable as an on-premise appliance (hardware and software) or in the cloud. HANA is optimized for performing real-time analytics and handling very high volumes of operational and transactional data in real time. HANA's in-memory analytics queries data stored in random access memory (RAM) instead of on a hard disk or flash storage. Things started happening quickly after that. When ARI's controller wanted an impact analysis of the company's top 10 customers, SAP HANA produced the result in 3 to 31/2 seconds. In ARI's old systems environment, this task would have been assigned to a power user versed in using reporting tools, specifications would have to be drawn up and a program designed for that specific query, a process that would have taken about 36 hours. Using HANA, ARI is now able to quickly mine its vast data resources and generate predictions based on the result. For example, the company can produce precise figures on what it costs to operate a fleet of a certain size over a particular route across specific industries during a certain type of weather and predict what the impact of changes in any of the variables. And it can do so nearly as easily as providing customers with a simple history of their expenditures on fuel. With such helpful information ARI provides more value to its customers. HANA has also reduced the time required for each transaction handled by ARI's call centers- from the time a call center staffer takes a call to retrieving and delivering the requested information-5 percent. Since call center staff account for 40 percent of ARI's direct overhead, that time reduction translates into major cost savings. ARI plans to make some of these real-time reporting and analytic capabilities available on mobile devices, which will enable customers to instantly approve a variety of operation procedures, such as authorizing maintenance repairs. Customers will also be able to use the mobile tools for instant insight into their fleet operations, down to a level of detail such as a specific vehicles's tire history. Question: summarize this article in 4 paragraphs using your own words.

Answer 1

ARI, also known as Automotive Resource International, is world’s largest company for vehicle fleet management services among all privately held companies. It is headquartered in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey but operates across several continents like North America, Europe, and Asia. The company has more than 2500 employees worldwide and manages more than $1 million vehicles only in North America and Europe. Their business revolves around monitoring and managing vehicles for other organizations that need services of shipments. ARI provides various services when it comes to such vehicles and their scope of service covers the entire shipment process. Acquisition of vehicles to resale, driver management to training, risk and fuel management services, all are covered by ARI.

However, in doing so ARI faces certain challenges. Due to large customer base and large fleet, the management of data from these vehicles became a major concern. The company operates with six call centers in North America. The main objective of these call centers is to provide real-time actionable information to customers. A single vehicle generates large amount of complex data. Data on fuel consumption, maintenance status, licensing, compliance, etc. Moreover data such as fuel transaction requires information on state taxes, fuel grade, total sales, amount sold, time, and place of purchase. Similarly there are various other attributes for each category of data. These forms over 14000 pieces of data per vehicle. This is just for a single vehicle and in case of ARI, there are nearly 10,000 vehicles. These vehicles operate across the globe and these data form a very complex ecosystem to handle.

When customers call and ask for a report on their vehicle ARI had their own way of handling it. Due to the large complexity, the amount of data that was provided on these reports were limited. ARI could provide the data as available but could not provide any trend or recommendations that require complex analysis. Information such as benchmarks could not be provided as they required a lot of manual work. Moreover, once a request arrived, ARI would take nearly 5 days to generate the report. This is where SAP Business Object Explorer came in for ARI in 2011.

SAP Business Object Explorer is a Business Intelligence tool that makes it easy for users to access, analyze and organize data with a user friendly interface. The users are not required to run any query and can directly retrieve data and create reports using the tool. In 2012, it was further integrated with HANA, an in-memory computing platform from SAP. HANA is available on premise and on the cloud and allows users to perform real-time analytics on large volumes of data. Things began to improve quickly and now reports were generated in matter of minutes. For example, impact analysis of top 10 customers would have taken approximately 36 hours in the previous system. But now that was possible in 3-4 seconds. In addition to that, several types of slicing and dicing operation from SAP platforms also helped ARI and preparing a more insightful report. For example, a report on cost of fuel consumption on certain size vehicles over a specific weather on a particular route. HANA also reduced the time it takes for customer service operators to 5 percent of its previous time. Considering that the company’s 40% strength was in call-centers, this provided in considerable amount of cost saving. Now ARI plans to make these insights available to customers on their mobile as the next step.