Mopping Up Dirty Data - ' A Clear View ' (
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A Clear View
Patrick Wise
Landstar System, Inc.
Vice President, Advanced Technology
Jacksonville, Fla.
www.landstar.com
Manager's Profile: Wise is responsible for technology infrastructure
and applications at the $1.5-billion transportation-services company. Critical
to Wise is creating systems that help Landstar communicate with its 1,000 independent
sales agents and the 7,000 affiliates who operate trucks and other transportation
gear.
Landstar's Legacy: The company's three major groups operate autonomously,
with different systems and different ways of representing customer information
such as address and account history. Until recently, Landstar had no way of
collecting and viewing customer information in a consistent way. "We decided
we needed to eliminate redundancy and get a single, accurate picture of the
business," Wise says.
Wise's Technology Challenge: His team built a central data warehouse
fed by the three groups' core systems. The company used Ascential's Enterprise
Integration Suite, including QualityStage data-quality tools, to integrate and
cleanse data before they are funneled into the data warehouse. "We had historical
files going back 15 years, all written with different syntax," he says.
The Benefit: Executives now can get consistent, consolidated reports
on company financials and operations. Affiliates have access to accurate data
in online applications that show, for example, where truckers can pick up loads
that are ready for transport and whether payment has been made on the last load
that was shipped.
What's Next: Wise's team has begun to test Ascential's Real Time Integration
Services feature to correct data as they're entered online by partners.
