inGauge Weekly Benchmarking Update – 06/29/2016

 

Population Stats

  • 108 unique Motor Carriers (141 when you include sub-profiles) – 1 new BPG Member registered in past week, 1 new Flatbed carrier registered
  • 56 Dry Van (Truckload)
  • 37 Refrigerated (Truckload)
  • 13 Flatbed / Open Deck (Truckload)
  • 2 Specialized (Truckload)
  • 2 LTL
*Attention Flatbed Carriers*
A new flatbed Best Practice Group is currently being assembled with a proposed official launch in October (first meeting will be either October 5th in Minneapolis or October 18th in Little Rock. If you are interested in joining this group, or would like to learn more, please email Debbie Sparks to complete your carrier profile:[email protected]. Please note, you must be a TCA member to participate in the Best Practice Group program.

 

Gross Revenue Metrics – Live

On Monday, we added five new metrics based on, which are a function of Gross Revenue, these are:
  • Insurance Expense – Company and Owner Operator Fleet (% of Gross Revenue)
  • Maintenance Expense – Company Fleet (% of Gross Revenue)
  • Revenue per Truck per Week – Company Fleet
  • Revenue per Truck per Week – Owner Operator Fleet
  • Personnel Expense – Company Fleet (% of Gross Revenue)
In order to view these new metrics, you will need to report your Fuel Surcharge Revenue (Total, Company Fleet and Owner Operator Fleet). These line items are #149 (Total), #199 (Company Fleet), and # 248 (OO). Please export your template, with these line items from the export/import area of inGauge. As always, email or call me if you have any questions.

 

Population Filter Changes 

Two long standing user suggestions are almost ready to promoted to the live server. Subject to testing, we expect to add (next week), the ability to select multiple items for each population filter option. For example, choose multiple States/Provinces, multiple BPG groups etc. Further, a new filter option called ‘Fleet Size’ will (finally) be added. The range for this option will be (active tractors): 1-49, 50-99, 100 – 249, 250-499 & 500+.

 

McLeod Software Mapping Feature

Over the past three months, McLeod Software has been developing a custom mapping tool that will allow their users to capture and report the specific data points required to utilize both the inGauge Online Benchmarking Service, as well as participate in the Best Practice Groups. This feature will streamline the data collection and reporting process for all benchmarking participants who are McLeod customers. TCA is pleased to announce that this new partnership has officially entered the testing phase.

TCA is inviting Best Practice Group Members and inGauge online subscribers to participate in testing this new feature. To participate, McLeod customers must be on version 11.0 of their respective McLeod software platform. In addition, interested users must be utilizing a fiscal year which follows Calendar months, and have the ‘statistical accounts feature’ enabled.

If you are interested in learning more, please contact Chris Henry, inGauge Program Manager via email ([email protected]) or via phone (1-888-504-6428).

TCA Webinar: “Benchmarking: Inights into Action” Recording Now Live in Truckload Academy

Thanks to the generous sponsorship of Eco Flaps, TCA members can now access the recording of the Truckload Academy webinar Benchmarking: Turning Insights into Action, for free in their accounts on the Truckload Academy On-demand (TAO). Hear how carriers use real operational data to make specific strategic and operational decisions to drive efficiency and improve bottom line results. For log-in assistance, view the “How to” videos under the “Help” tab.

 

Essential Performance Indicators: The inGauge “Safe OR” – Version #2

We have received some great feedback from inGauge users and those in the Safety & Compliance regarding our new Safe OR measure.
As a reminder,  we introduced the “Safe OR” two weeks ago. This new EPI is a combination of a company’s Operating Ratio as well as the sum of the three CSA Basic scores mentioned above. For example, if your Operating Ratio is 94.5%, and the sum of your three selected CSA Basic Scores is “3”, your new “Safe OR” is calculated as 97.5%. Similarly, if your Operating Ratio is 94.5%, and the sum of your three selected CSA Basic Scores is “7”, your new “Safe OR” is calculated as 101.50%. In other words, this measure rewards BOTH profitability and safety.
Based on feedback from inGauge users, we created ‘Version #2’ of this score, by replacing the BASIC scores in the above metric with Insurance expense (% of Revenue), which captures premium, deductibles and paid claims. Using this alternative, for example, if a company has a Operating Ratio of 93.00% and Insurance Expense (% of Revenue) of 3.5%, this alternate “Safe OR” would be 96.5%.
In both examples, you are rewarded for both profitability and strong performance, however the argument for the alternative method is that Insurance expense is largely determined by a third party based on actual claims experience, as opposed to results which can be contaminated due to geography and subjectivity.
In terms of results, thus far, the performance range for this new score is 88.92 to 116.29. To review your own results for either of these two scores, please log in and make sure to ‘check’ this metric within your subscriber profile.

 

Best Practice Groups on inGauge

BPG members are adopting inGauge to help communicate their performance versus their fellow group members (and the entire inGauge Database) to more people in their organizations. The recently launched BPG Dashboard was built based on the specifications of Jack Porter, as well as BPG members such as Raider Express, Bison Transport, Ralph Moyle, and SLH. The BPG Dashboard allows existing Best Practice Group members to interact with their specific group data visually. Within the BPG Dashboard, you have the ability to view your results for a specific month (January is now live), as well as your results via rolling 12 month line graphs. Each of these two views allow users to ‘filter out’ fellow group companies from the displayed results. Here are the new features we are actively working on with respect to this dashboard:
  • Ability to export graphs/charts to PNG/JPEG format (now live)
  • Bar Chart color for user distinct from fellow group members (in progress)
  • Bar Chart for user located directly beside Group Average Bar (in progress)
  • Group Average bar to change to “GPorter High Performance Average” (in progress)
  • Company labels for bar chart to change to vertical orientation as opposed to horizontal orientation (now live)
Keep in mind, this new tool is in ‘Beta’ mode, so if you encounter any weird behavior, please report to us. If you would like to know more, please email me:[email protected].
 

New Features (Live)
  • Leading Indicators Dashboard – allows subscribers to utilize a custom dashboard focused on those weekly ‘leading indicators’ that are crucial to short and long term success.
  • Best Practice Member Dashboard – allows Best Practice Members to display their results visually versus their fellow members – Gauge and Line Charts.
  • CSA SMS BASIC Data – The Beta version of this feature allows inGauge subscribers to benchmark their performance versus the other 98 (current) inGauge subscribers on these results. To confirm, this data will remain entirely confidential/anonymous.
  • Gauge Order Preference – Using a new drag and drop feature, available under ‘Profile Management’, primary users can change the order that the gauges are displayed.
  • New Onboarding/Registration Process – to smooth the initial onboarding and registration process we have introduced a new registration/education process.
New Features (Development Queue)
  • Formula and Raw Data for each EPI – this new feature will allow users to click on a button, after hovering over a specific gauge. This will open a box which will display the exact formula for each EPI and the raw data used to calculate the results.
  • Population Filters – Ability to select multiple criteria within each population filter (Now Testing)
  • Population Filters – Fleet size, initial ranges will be 1-49, 50-99, 100-249, 250-499 & 500+
  • Dashboard Query Optimization – depending on the size of your peer group, inGauge currently processes up to 4700 sub-queries in order to display the dashboard results. Our lead developer is diligently working on optimizing these queries to achieve a goal of 3-4 second load time without any population filters applied. You may notice a 20% improvement in dashboard load time since last week – we continue to look for new ways to speed up this process.
  • Leading Indicators Dashboard: 1) Web Form input specific to the metrics selected; 2) Line chart attached to each gauge (similar to external dashboard; 3) API data update; and 4) Ability to embed Leading Indicators dashboard on company’s own internal intranet / management software.
  • BPG Dashboard – Other TC Group average available in filter window to select for inclusion.

Igor