In recent times, some of the key challenges to optimising a logistics operation have been exposed in the delay of available, accurate and timely information.
If the business is run from the accounting system the information may not be available until after the close of a quarterly or monthly business reporting period.
In other situations, if a particular system contains the information but fails to have a friendly interface to extract the relevant information then it may not be contributing to better decisions. This is not because it does not have the data but because it is hard to access.
myDIALS is a company pioneering a new industry standard in operational performance management.
The company was established three years ago in response to a perceived gap in the market for a solution which could arm logistics organisations with consistent, easy and timely access to relevant performance as well as a set of metrics that would help better manage business and improve operational performance.
The myDIALS management team had previously worked in a range of companies and been the users of various information management solutions, including OLAP cubes and simple Excel spreadsheets.
All of these traditional solutions were aimed directly at the business analyst, not the business user, and they typically suffered from only being available at certain times in the business quarter.
As a result, for much of the time, the business was running on laggard data, and the tools were often too complex for a manger to use.
At the same time, many vendors over the years have convinced users that the answer to their problem is a system replacement, a new ERP system or a corporate wide business intelligence project. These suffer from a number of drawbacks.
Not only does the customer not see the results for quite some time but the organisation has to invest large amount of capital upfront as part of the purchasing process.
This is not ideal in today’s economic environment where projects are viewed more carefully by organisations before they commit to spending capital.
The result of this is that business performance is typically viewed from multiple silos and executives, and managers and business professionals don't have a timely, comprehensive, holistic view of the operational performance of the business.
However, business has to progress and those companies that are looking at a large business intelligence (BI) project are now more likely to look at a solution like myDIALS that solves these issues, delivers quick wins to the business and enables managers to make better business decisions.
In fact, myDIALS offers 'Quick time to Value'. It’s a new style of company where employees work with a customer, identify one or two issues in the business that need surfacing and then deploy a myDIALS dashboard.
This is achieved quickly and cost effectively enabling the customer to see results within two weeks. The customer can then start to work on that particular issue harvesting the savings or improvements rapidly.
In addition, the myDIALS pricing model means that the customer has no need to make a large investment upfront. The customer pays for the services as myDIALS expands in their organisation, resulting in users only paying for the value that they receive.
Established by Australians, myDIALS has offices as well as research and development centres in Perth and Brisbane.
Local customers include Adelaide Brighton Cement, Ausreo, LogiCamms and a major bottler of soft drink beverages.
The company also boasts a growing list of international clientele — the fruits of establishing an office in North America.
myDIALS delivers software services to help companies improve their operational performance without replacing the current system in place.
The product aims to make business intelligence (BI) as self-service as possible. This means that the end user can create dashboards, link to different systems within the company and access the information they want to see when they want to see it - in real time.
As Jeremy Bolton, Sales and Marketing Manager, myDIALS, explains, “myDIALS connects directly to the appropriate data source thus eliminating a costly and time consuming project to normalise the data.
"The approach is to work with the existing system and extract more value. Our basic premise is that data the company currently has is running their business today so why not use that data more effectively, and then deliver it in a timely manner to the people.
“As a result, the need to replace a current system is at least deferred, negating the need to outlay on critical capital expenditure but at the same time still continue to improve their business.”
Indeed, myDIALS is the first performance management solution to effectively link and immediately present operations and business metrics as they change, providing organisations with an alternative to costly and resource-intensive business intelligence systems.
myDIALS is provided as a subscriber SaaS-based offering and delivered as a hosted dashboard.
It provides real-time Key Performance Indicator (KPI) visualisation that combines operations and business performance metrics.
The hosted software solution extracts real-time metrics and calculates KPIs and associated Key Performance Drivers (KPDs) across all business roles, processes and value streams.
The information is provided back to the customer on a web page and allows for the customer to drill into the data to see where issues lie and narrow down problems to location, product or any other dimension that the customer wishes to analyse in their data bay.
“myDIALS provides the window into the customers’ issue by initially measuring the information accurately and then delivering it to key stakeholders," says Bolton.
"The customer then may the take the process and improve various aspects applying lean, Six Sigma, Theory of Constraint strategies to deliver quick wins to the customer and rationalise their processes.
"myDIALS has a number of partners that deliver these complimentary services such as Sage Automation in Adelaide.
"The customer is then in a better position to make informed decisions.”
The role of the myDIALS dashboard allows a business to see easily where its performance issues lay. For example, is the organisation meeting its on time delivery targets, which location has the biggest supply chain issues, is the problem product based, is my gross margin suffering and, if so, on which product lines do I need to focus my attention.
A dashboard aligns behaviours in a business and, as myDIALS is a SaaS product, it is ideally suited to collecting and suppling information from different corporate entities — something which has traditionally been difficult in the past.
“We become as it were the trusted third party where each of the parties can upload the relevant information about the supply chain and authorised parties can access the information the need in real time,” says Bolton.
Traditionally, this has been much more difficult to achieve as the entity holding the data has to be trusted by all of the other entities involved.
However, myDIALS is also seeing demand in organisations who wish to provide scorecard information about their organisational or departmental performance.
These are typically centered around business process improvement methodology where the goals and measures need to be disseminated throughout the organisation.
In addition, as myDIALS is delivered via the Internet, it provides the customer with various options when dealing with outside stakeholders.
“For example, SNAP-ON tools in the US has published data to secure servers which allows its network of franchisees to access a dashboard displaying their individual performance," Bolton explains.
"The franchisee is required to enter sales goal information which is then tracked across the business. All this data occurs outside of the SNAP-ON firewall.
"Another example is a large manufacturer who wishes to share with its vendors Key Performance Indicators on delivery information.
"The myDIALS approach is very cost-effective and delivers quick time to value.”
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