Identifying cost savings around a BI implementation can be difficult, yet Welch Foods, the maker of juices and jellies, has done just that. The company spends over $50 million per year transporting their products, yet had a difficult time understanding their cost drivers. Working with a company called Oco, Welch's implemented a BI system using the Software as a Service model. The article doesn't quantify the cost savings, but Welch's was able to better understand their customer order patterns to identify opportunities to improve truck-capacity utilization. The company claims their new BI system paid for itself in 30 days.

Something to note is that the company recently implemented Oracle as their ERP system, but still had other systems that were not integrated into Oracle. As a result, they still had a fragmented IT strucctured and this BI model enabled Welch's to tie it all together.

An excerpt from the article:

The BI tool allows Welch's to analyze its logistics costs, volume and order flow "by many different dimensions," including by geography, manufacturing plant, distribution center, carrier, customer and shipping form, according to Coyne. Welch's now can aggregate any time periods, compare year-over-year time periods and analyze volume and cost by any sales division.

"But the real beauty of this is that we have… every data element on every order, every bill of lading and every freight bill in a single data warehouse, and with the ability to look at it in any way that we want, and then, beyond that, the ability to drill all the way down to an individual freight bill order or bill of lading," Coyne says. "If we see something that looks the least bit funny, we have the ability to drill down to an individual shipment or shipments."

Here's the link to the full article:

http://industryweek.com/articles/bi_tool_bears_fruit_for_welchs_19784.aspx?Page=2&SectionID=32?ShowAll=1