Aramex is a integrated logistics player headquartered in Jordan.

Its vision statement

emphasizes on establishing Aramex as fifth largest global integrated logistics
player. Having presence in India since 1997, Aramex business model provides both
flexibility & efficiency in operations. Asset based business acts as a backbone of
logistics operations & recently emerging non asset based operations add flexibility.
This strategy was a key differentiator between Aramex & its competitors during
global meltdown with Aramex India increasing its bottomline by 20% during 2008-
09.

Enterprise Operations Performance Management tool is a dashboard emphasizing

on aligning logistics operations with the strategic goals of Aramex. The objective of
my project was design of a tool achieve visibility of standardized processes across
alliances of Aramex spread all over India. Integrating IT as a supporting backend to
standardizing processes was necessary to create transparency and flexibility for
both the freight operators & partners and their customers. Aramex has mapped its
collection & distribution operations on the hub & spoke model. Although the model
addresses operations efficiencies, some of the business rule ambiguities infused by
this model are

a. Line haul bearer in case of missed shipments due to

1. Off-load at source due to improper freight reservation systems

2. Cut-off slippage at destination due to improper routing mechanism

This was subsequently followed by profit sharing & employee appraisal across
various hub of Aramex India. With the advent of shop & ship service, this issue
needed an immediate address as the line haul increase multifold for India based
customers.

b. Negative cash flows for B2C e-commerce clients like Flipkart & Naptol in case
of return of COD shipments. The management needed to view the
performance of each station in this regard.

c. Shipments pending in warehouse for pickup due alliance member’s violation

needed to be more visible.

Methodology:

Clarity, detail, presentation, media & timeliness are major parameters of a report.

Initial phase of my project laid emphasis on analysis of logistics & cargo delivery
operations at Aramex India. A thorough understanding of business processes
across major alliance partners spread in lengths & breadths of India was
undertaken. This was followed by gathering the information needed by the
executives to have a visibility of organization wide operations on a real time basis. I
worked with the analytics team at Aramex to work on the retrieval & processing of
information from the ERP tool implemented at Aramex. Since the data is
astronomical in size & is very dynamic in nature, real time visibility plays an
important role in controlling.

Design of dashboard as per key decision maker’s requirements & product-wise &
customer-wise variants of various reports were developed. A web based data model
was developed to create a decentralized data hub, reducing load on GSO, Jordan &
giving more control to managers at India.

Pilot implementation was followed by validating the reports with legacy approach.
This was followed by Pan-India implementation of tool & it was available to
managers across India on Aramex intranet.

Immediate paybacks from tool implementation were

a. Time needed to get customized reports was down by 75% & most importantly
the dashboard shifted to India reducing load on Aramex Global HO

b. Man-power for working on variants of reports was reduced by 60% - a very

important advancement towards non-asset based businesses

On a strategic carpet, benefits which are to be derived from implementation of this

project across geographies are

a. Increased Asset utilization in freight handling functions

b. Freight reservation management to minimize shipment offloading by
reservation on a priori basis. It also increases the bargaining power of the
carrier
c. Dynamic route generation to ensure efficient & timely delivery of
committed shipments
d. Freight rate management for competitiveness based on prices