LogCOST - transport cost planning and accounting

Making effective sourcing decisions and assessing profitability require allocation of transport costs to individual products or shipments. However, there is often a large discrepancy between actual and planned transport costs. With LogCOST you can change to efficient data handling and speed up your decision-making processes by being able to make fast calculations and have the right KPIs at the right time.

Big Data for transport cost planning and accounting

On the inbound side, the bill of materials, planned production output and relevant suppliers are linked to derive meaningful data of transport flows. We use the same method for intercompany transport. For outbound volumes, sales forecasts per region are used to derive transport costs for the finished goods. LogCOST merges this information to derive accurate data on all transport activities and assesses them using company-specific, detailed transport tariffs. As a result, LogCOST opens the door for your company to analyze planned inbound, intercompany and outbound costs at the SKU/product level. What’s more, with LogCOST you can control and report planned and actual transport costs in one tool. This enables you to identify and analyze at an early stage if, where and why you are running out of budget.

With its system architecture designed to make the most of Big Data, LogCOST can calculate billions of shipments per day and perform comparisons of planned and actual transport costs at any time. The granularity of details down to the SKU level gives you full control and enables an exact analysis.

LogCOST - From sales forecast to budget calculation

Global and multi-modal

LogCOST models and analyzes transport chains on a global scale. Embedded geo-data for locations and distances allows the development of what-if-scenarios on the fly for all modes of transportation.

LogCOST - Logistics Transport Cost Planning and Accounting

Concept

LogCOST is designed to help shippers and 3PLs calculate actual and planned transport costs.

LogCOST derives transport costs directly from the production and sales forecast. On the inbound side, the bill of materials, planned production output and relevant suppliers are linked to derive meaningful data of transport flows. We use the same method for intercompany transport. For outbound volumes, sales forecasts per region are used to derive transport costs for the finished goods. LogCOST merges this information to derive accurate data on all transport activities and assesses them using company-specific, detailed transport tariffs. As a result, LogCOST opens the door for your company to analyze planned inbound, intercompany and outbound costs at the SKU/product level. In addition, you can control and report planned and actual transport costs in one tool. This enables you to identify and analyze at an early stage if, where and why you are running out of budget. To calculate costs for a specific shipment or product, you simply follow these steps:

Derive transport information from sales forecasts (transport volumes, plants and suppliers).
Consolidate shipments (consolidation by fallback or individual business rules).
Generate transports according to transport volumes (in- and outbound), source and target locations (plants and supplier locations).
Evaluate costs for the whole transport.
Break down costs to the shipment/product level.

Due to basic fallback values and consolidation rules, you can use LogCOST even with missing information. Furthermore, you can set optimization algorithms to evaluate the transport costs of your actual and optimized network setup.

LogCOST transport cost planning

LogCOST for Shippers

Forecasts for transport costs of shipments are based on production plans and sales forecasts made several years before the transport actually takes place, creating the necessity to rely on assumptions and predictive analytics. Additionally, you want to break down transport costs to the SKU-level to support total cost of ownership (TCO) and cost-to-serve questions.

With LogCOST, we help you meet the major challenges in transport cost planning

What are the suppliers, plants and customers of the future?
What are relevant production and sales figures?
Which tariffs and capacities have to be considered?
What is the share of transport costs per unit in the future?

Moreover, we can help you track your planned transport costs versus the actual transport costs and create an early warning on whether and why you are running out of the planned transport budget.

LogCOST for Third Party Logistics Providers

To supply the future demand of shippers you need to be able to answer key questions in detail. For example, where and how to strengthen the network, where to close locations, where to increase or decrease capacities and when to prolong contracts with subcontractors and carriers.

With LogCOST, we help you meet the major challenges in transport cost planning

What are the subcontractors, locations and customers of the future?
What are the requested delivery times and frequencies?
How to bundle transport volume?
What tariffs and capacities have to be considered?
In addition, we can help you track your planned transport costs versus the actual transport costs and give you an early warning on whether and why you are running out of the planned transport budget.

Technology

All products of the Log-family are cloud service based on SAP Hana (SCP) and available globally via a web browser:

Standard diagrams and reporting are based on SAPUI5.
All coding done in native HANA SQL / XS Classic. Frontend contains logic for visualizations only.
Predictive-Analytics library for performing trend analyses
Log360 utilizes a predictive analytics library to perform trend analyses.
Integrated development environment for frontend, services and databank entities
Data service definitions are based on tables and views of the HANA Database.
On the server-side a JavaScript application logic is implemented.
XS-Engine and DB speak the same “dialect” – no “translations” are necessary.
Optimal data transfer between backend and frontend is ensured.
Interfaces from flat files to OData- and REST-services allow high flexibility and quick ramp up.
An embedded Google API service is used for accurate geo-coding.