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Case study

How CACI’s route optimisation software helped Prides Corner Farms

Prides Corner Farms logo

Summary

Prides Corner Farms is a wholesale grower in Connecticut, serving the North East corner of the USA from Maine through Ohio to Virginia. A family-owned nursery business in operation for over five decades, Prides Corner Farms grows over 3,000 varieties of plants and flowers on 600 acres of land. The business is proud of its industry-leading logistics, providing excellent service through easier, timelier deliveries that allow customers to sell quicker with less effort. Prides Corner Farms delivers to over 2,500 individual locations in a typical year, with 70 trucks making over 200 daily drops to garden centres, wholesale yards, landscapers and retailers in peak season – and sales continue to grow.

Company size

500

Industry

Agriculture

Services used

Challenge

Prides Corner Farms knew they needed software to optimise their truck delivery routes as their business grew. With a team of six working on route planning and sales reps spending many hours a day looking at delivery schedules, the team wanted to reduce workload and automate as much as possible.

The team needed a tool that could give them full route visibility, reduce mileage, optimise vehicle numbers and create efficient, cost-effective routes. Prides Corner Farms saw CACI’s route optimisation solutions demonstrated at a trade show and saw its potential immediately.

Solution

Rolling out CACI’s software helped Prides Corner take the next step in their programme to improve efficiency and service, building on a successful lean flow shipping operation that uses carts to load trucks. CACI provided the route optimisation software, consultancy, data customisation and implementation support.

Ray DeFeo says, “We did a two-month pilot – I think we were a challenging customer for the proof of concept because our model has so many variables. CACI helped us develop an excellent algorithm based on our business rules.”

When reps take orders, they’re placed in holding batches for each territory.

This tool groups the orders and allocates them to trucks, factoring in different sizes and type of truck to suit delivery access, at the destination. The algorithm also embraces daily time limits for drivers and variable speed limits on the route, to ensure prompt and accurate delivery times.

Logistics coordinator Brittany Landry runs the CACI’s software twice daily. “We plan it to run two days before the target delivery date. Each territory rep has a quota to fulfil and they fill up the holding batches.”

“We’ve recently implemented cart retrievals,” adds IT manager Christian Joseph. “It’s a big addition to the project. We had our Lean process, harvesting crops onto carts and putting them into our staging area. We have to get the carts back and we were doing it by hand, which was incredibly time consuming. When realised that we could get the cart retrievals handled by CACI Logistics it freed up a lot of time.”

Results

CACI Logistics has helped Prides Corner Farms save a huge amount of time on manual processing, by automating both delivery routes and scheduling and cart retrievals. Instead of six logistics planners, the firm now only needs one.

Sales rep Brad Sorenson says, “Before, I was spending as much as 40% of the day planning deliveries, rubbing out and correcting to get everything fitted together. Now, I meet our logistics planner Cheryl Records at 9am: she shows everyone the plan and we spend half an hour reviewing it to tweak it – that’s it.” Despite being based in another country and time zone, support from the CACI team has been strong.

According to Christian Joseph: “CACI being in London wasn’t an issue – the support has been rock solid. Our account manager was fantastic in answering our questions before go-live. We threw a lot of curve balls and she knocked them out of the park. They have a great virtual working set-up.”

Prides Corner Farms - Digital graph and analysis on a laptop

Ray DeFeo is pleased with the impact of CACI’s route optimisation solutions on sales rep recruitment and training. “One of the biggest challenges a person would have, on top of potentially being new to the nursery business, they also had to understand the logistics pattern and how to route a truck. This is not a core sales skillset. Now, we can concentrate on recruiting and retaining people with great selling and customer service skills – logistics is separate,” he explained.

“Since 2012, our sales have doubled, but we haven’t had to increase the size of our sales teams. The Lean Flow approach and CACI’s software enable our reps to handle bigger territories because they can focus on sales. They’re happy because they have scope to make more commission with a bigger area to go at.”

Brad Sorenson adds, “Talking to drivers, they feel that their routes are now more efficient time-wise. They can start with the customer that can open earliest and keep moving without delays. The drivers really do like it.”

Prides Corner Farms estimates their mileage savings at ten per cent or more, which could mean annual savings of over $100,000USD in transport costs.

Learn more about our Route optimisation solutions

Case Studies

Case study

How CACI’s optimisation software gave Agrovista a 10/10 experience

Agrovista logo

Summary

When Agrovista, a leading supplier of agronomy advice, farming services and seed and crop protection products, wished to grow but faced unpredictable challenges when trying to do so, it became clear that data and technology would be crucial in supporting their growth ambitions. 

Agrovista delivers agronomic potential to their customers by helping them manage their operations more efficiently and profitably. To do this, their services are provided in two streams: one being as specialists from the business who visit farms to assess disease pressure, weeds, infestations and nutrient deficiencies to increase the yield, the other as logistics and support teams that focus on the delivery of the solutions to any problems that arise in the specialists support stage, such as the provision of pesticides or nutrients.  

Company Size

500

Industry

Agriculture

Services used

Summary

When Agrovista, a leading supplier of agronomy advice, farming services and seed and crop protection products, wished to grow but faced unpredictable challenges when trying to do so, it became clear that data and technology would be crucial in supporting their growth ambitions. 

Agrovista delivers agronomic potential to their customers by helping them manage their operations more efficiently and profitably. To do this, their services are provided in two streams: one being as specialists from the business who visit farms to assess disease pressure, weeds, infestations and nutrient deficiencies to increase the yield, the other as logistics and support teams that focus on the delivery of the solutions to any problems that arise in the specialists support stage, such as the provision of pesticides or nutrients.  

Challenges

Agrovista’s operations team endeavoured to fulfil all customers’ orders and further improve service levels and interactions with customers without losing that focus on core business functions. Due to their planning team’s unfamiliarity with route optimisation software, the business was keen to avoid major changes for the team. They also needed to find a way to efficiently ship products out from their 20 depots across the country, which was particularly difficult in rural areas.

Solution

Agrovista invested in CACI’s route optimisation software. This software was used to plan routes that met Agrovista’s business constraints, including a same-day delivery requirement. The implementation took advantage of the flexible integration options offered by the software, embedding it within Agrovista’s existing systems and automating the route creation process. This meant that compliant and efficient routes were pre-created for the planning team, all within software that they were familiar with. 

Results

The newly automated process for route optimisation helped Agrovista achieve several goals. For example, the ability to plan efficient routes that adhered to all of Agrovista’s unique constraints allowed the business to deliver all orders on time, keeping their customers happy and minimising costs. The software changes that were made caused minimal disruption to staff and the wider business, instead increasing the time-efficiency of the planning and operations teams and simplifying processes, enabling them to re-focus efforts on the core business.

As one of their top trusted suppliers, CACI’s reactivity and proactivity helped the business achieve their cost-reduction and route optimisation goals and will continue to support their rapid expansion strategically, effectively and at cost. Agrovista was impressed with CACI’s people, systems and processes, scoring CACI a 10/10 for their overall partnership experience. Going forward, Agrovista is actively looking to grow their relationship by adding other products and services from CACI’s logistics portfolio.

Find out more about our Route optimisation solutions

Case studies

Case study

Delivering data & insights to provide Bright Horizons with a new approach to childcare

Summary

Trusted by families to look after their children for over 30 years, Bright Horizons is an award-winning nursery provider. The company operates over 300 community and workplace nurseries throughout the UK — each is individually designed to serve the needs of its community. Bright Horizons provides tailored childcare for corporate clients and for families, at home, at work and in local settings.

Company size

10,000+

Industry

Education

Products used

Challenge

Bright Horizons initially approached CACI for data to support their new site opening and acquisition insight programme.

Reliable data that was quick and easy to interpret for new site and location decision making was needed

Access to demographic data to support proposition development

Gain a better understanding of existing potential catchments

Solution

CACI provided Acorn demographics, profiling and mapping, giving insight into specific postcodes and communities. High-level demographic maps are instantly visible in InSite’s Locator tool.

Marketing Manager Eddie Thorogood explains: “The blend of data creates reliable and up-to-date information about the demand for our services, to support decision-making about how and where we can expand our operations so we can deliver high quality childcare where it’s needed. It also helps us improve our business model, so we can manage our portfolio and flex and balance our sites to meet changing needs.”

Results

Bright Horizons’ three pillars are ‘people, quality, growth’. Eddie explains, “We’re not about just growing for the sake of it. We always want to be where we are needed – where parents can find us and our services will be useful. With this data insight at local level, we can provide a clear picture of community and workplace need to our senior leadership team, so they can sign off new facilities.”

Learn more about Acorn and InSite.

Case studies

Are dashboards dead? Assessing their challenges & advantages to determine their future in businesses

Sagar Limbu

In this Article

Dashboards have been quite a topic of contention in certain circles with the recent recirculation of Taylor Brownlow’s essay ”Are Dashboards Dead?”.

While I’m of the opinion that no, dashboards are not dead, they have been undeniably overused and often misunderstood, with a disconnect between a dashboard’s actual function versus our perceived function of them. 

Why is there dashboard fatigue?

Many of us have experienced dashboard fatigue, and rightfully so. As businesses, how many dashboards have we commissioned that were never fully utilised, if used at all? The answer is too many.

The reason for low engagement isn’t the fault of the humble dashboard, but rather that a dashboard was never the appropriate solution for the end user, or its design wasn’t tailored enough to the business use case.  

When faced with a business problem requiring data insights, we often jump straight to dashboard creation. However, there are many other solutions that can be tailored to deliver data insights, such as concise reports and static presentations. With an increased understanding of where dashboards fail, the conversation has shifted to questioning their relevance altogether.  

So, what place do dashboards still have in businesses, and how can we better understand where they excel to drive improved outcomes? 

What potential challenges may arise with dashboards?

There are many instances where dashboards may be less effective or complicate matters for businesses, and other methods provide a better solution. Instances may include: 

  • When the user needs a concise answer to a question:
    Dashboards require interaction and exploration, which can be time-consuming. If a stakeholder needs a straightforward answer, a tailored report is more efficient.  
  • For business specific, niche questions:
    Not every level of enquiry warrants the resource-intensive creation of a dashboard. For narrow, targeted questions, simpler reporting methods suffice. 
  • One-time insights:
    Dashboards are overkill for static data projects, such as measuring the success of a single transformation. In these cases, producing a well-crafted report or presentation is more resource-efficient. 
  • If the data is exported for analysis:
    If users regularly export dashboard data to manipulate it elsewhere, it’s a sign that the dashboard doesn’t meet their needs or wasn’t necessary to begin with. 

When might dashboards be the right solution?

Company-wide reporting platforms

Dashboards provide a unified view of performance across teams, offering consistent delivery of insights to aiding faster decision making, customisable filters for views specific to each business unit, efficiency in distributing insights without the need for manual reporting and increased data accessibility through data visualisation. 

Regular cadence reporting

For tracking ongoing metrics such as daily sales, customer trends or campaign performance, and measuring progress against targets, dashboards provide updated insights without the wait. 

Exploratory analysis

Whenusers want to discover patterns, relationships or unknown trends within the data, dashboards allow for interactive interrogation. These tools are especially valuable for data-savvy end users, enabling self-service exploration without requiring an analyst’s intervention. 

Monitoring ongoing initiatives

Dashboards are excellent for tracking live projects or recurring business processes, offering real-time visibility into performance. 

The future approach for dashboards

With the above in mind, we’re moving to a more informed approach where dashboards are no longer a tiresome, default solution, but a carefully considered tool.

The future isn’t about abandoning dashboards, but about being intentional and strategic in their creation and deployment. The key is facilitating dashboard creation in a way that adds tangible value and is thoughtfully configured to provide meaningful, actionable insights that empower decision making. 

How CACI can help

At CACI, we work with you to deliver the best solutions for your analysis needs. Our extensive experience in successfully implementing dashboards across diverse industries highlights several key scenarios where dashboards have proven to be highly effective.  

Whether it’s creating a bespoke, one-off report or developing a suite of comprehensive, customisable dashboards, contact us to find out more about how our user centric approach and industry expertise can help you gain meaningful analytics that will drive strategic business outcomes.