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Worldwide Express Uses Zoho AnalyticsWorldwide Express Uses Zoho Analytics
 

Amy MilliganVP of Marketing & Business Analytics

I chose Zoho Analytics because of the interface and the robust features to handle our volumes of data quickly and efficiently. And also because it allowed for quick and efficient changes through the GUI.

Business

Worldwide Express is a global logistics company based in Dallas that has handled millions of package and freight shipments for 30,000 small and midsize business customers. With more than 150 franchises across the country, Worldwide Express is one of the largest authorized resellers of express shipping for United Parcel Service (UPS). More than 10,000 customers trust Worldwide Express with freight shipments through 30 carriers.

Challenge

Before Zoho Analytics, Worldwide Express was using a combination of a proprietary system and Microsoft Access for all its reporting needs. The system started showing strains, as the data kept on growing closer to 100 million rows. Also, using this system meant the Business Analytics department of Worldwide Express needed lots of development hours to generate the reports each month. Making these reports reach the intended users (evergrowing Worldwide Express employees and clients) in a user-friendly fashion was a big challenge too, as there was no easy way to share the reports, other than generating user-specific reports and emailing them as attachments.

We use our proprietary systems as well as Microsoft Access, for our reporting needs. Our proprietary systems are very complex and require development hours for reporting. Our intention is to get more data to our users in a user-friendly environment for filtering, etc. We have simply outgrown this system (the reporting we conduct on Microsoft Access, in conjunction with our proprietary system) both for transaction level, as well as the number of employees who need to be engaged in reporting.

 

Solution Highlight

Challenge

Find a reporting tool that scales well and will report on big data (over 100 million rows)

The reporting tool should be user-friendly

The reporting tool should reach as many end users as possible

Result

A reporting solution that handles over 100 million rows with acceptable latency

The solution being web-based, is accessible by end users anytime, anywhere

The solution is user-friendly and reaches more end users than before

Solution

Milligan started collecting recommendations from others and researched online for alternative solutions to their current reporting environment. That is when she discovered Zoho Analytics. She chose Zoho Analytics because of the interface and the robust features it offered, for handling the huge volumes of data quickly and efficiently. Zoho Analytics also allowed her to carry out quick and efficient changes of data and reports, through the GUI.

Worldwide Express is currently using Zoho Analytics for its financial partners who need user-friendly access to large volumes of data. It now has around 100 million rows of data in Zoho Analytics, and the number of rows are growing every month. And Milligan says she is "building out the infrastructure needed to support more robust weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual reporting, as well as ad hoc reporting for our corporate level analysis, sales contests, and our franchise system reporting as a whole."

While the process has involved challenges, I have found the Zoho team so very helpful. I can tell that Zoho has taken measures to accomplish our goals – building out their systems and processes to accommodate us as their customer. And, most importantly, that Zoho views those measures as an investment, not only in partnership with us, but also as an investment for their systems and for their entire customer base. For that approach and the level of service, we are very grateful.

Benefits & Results

  • Scalable system to easily analyze & report on over 100 million (and growing) rows of realtime data
  • Quick and effortless deployment of the reporting solution
  • Fast access times for any type of report or filtered data
  • Easy sharing of data and reports to its employees and customers, over the web
  • Increased user adoption as the end users can now easily click on the URL and view a report, anytime, anywhere
  • Easy quality control and review of data
  • Soft dollar savings as of now, with projections indicating high actual dollar savings going forward