We are happy to present you the new section to explore your data. 

If you are new to Analytics, we recommend you to read through the documentation about exploring data to get to know all functionalities. This article only focuses on the new features.

• Where To Start?
• What Is New?
  • Order Section
    
  • Shipment Section
  • Shipment / Order Lead Times Section -Dynamic Lead Time Calculations
    • Lead Time Condition
    • Service Level Agreement (SLA) Days Selection
    • Timestamp Selection
    • Default Settings
    • Lead Time Measures & Dimensions
    • Rules for Lead Time Calculation
    • Lead Time Calculation in UTC ⚡
    • Business Example - Calculating Lead Times for Mondial Relay and Colissimo
  • Claim by 7S Section 
• Good to Know

Where To Start?

The explore section is the starting point to deep dive into your order and shipment data. 

Click on Explore Analytics in the right sidebar menu of Analytics.  The arrow allows you to hide the menu to see the Explore in full screen. 

What Is New?

The look and feel of the new explore section is similar to the old one, but we heavily reworked the content to ensure great usability and leaner selection of dimensions and measures.

In the following we will deep dive into major changes and great new features. 

Order Section

Formerly we had three sections belonging to the order:

• Order #
• Order Info
• Order Lead Time KPIs
• Order Status/ Event KPIs

We now merged all dimensions and measures in one section 'Order' - only lead time calculation is still a separate one which will be further discussed later in the article. Let's first have a look into the general 'Order' section:

• Count [#] & Share [%] includes the measures that have formerly been listed below 'Order #'.

• Event/ Status includes the actual and historic status and event datapoints that could formerly been found in 'Order Status/ Event KPIs'. Clustering can now be done in 'Order Lead Times [1 & 2]'. Counts and shares like '# delayed' and '% delayed' can be found in Count [#]/Count by Tag [#] & Share [%]/Share by Tag [%]

Notable fields in the order section of the explore:

• Boarding Complete
  Indicates whether all shipments of an order have been shipped. Thereby only outbound shipments are taken into consideration.

• FDA Tag
  Indicates whether all outbound shipments of an order have already received a first delivery attempt (FDA).

• Created (Shop) Date Transferred (7S) Date
  The Created (Shop) Date  indicates when an order was created in the system of the shop. It is pushed via API to 7S. The Created (Shop) Date equals the date when an order goes to status 'New'. The Transferred (7S) Date indicates the time the order was transferred to 7S or in other words when the order was created in the 7S database.

• Status History ⚡
  In contrast to other fields in the explore event and status history fields are returning multiple rows for a single order since an order goes through multiple status in its lifetime.

Shipment Section

Formerly we had three sections belonging to the shipment: 

• Shipment #
• Shipment Info
• Lead Time KPIs
• Status/ Event KPIs.

We now merged all dimensions and measures in one - only lead time calculation is still a separate one which will be further discussed later in the article. Let's first have a look into the general shipment section:

• Count [#]/Count by Tag [#] & Share [%]/Share by Tag [%] includes the measures that have formerly been listed below 'Shipment #'.
• Event/ Status includes the actual and historic status and event datapoints that could formerly be found in 'Shipment Status/ Event KPIs'. Clustering can now be done in 'Shipment Lead Times [1 & 2]'. Counts and shares like '# damaged' and '% damaged' can also be found in Count [#]/Count by Tag [#] & Share [%]/Share by Tag [%]

The fields listed below require some additional attention:

• Event History ⚡/ Status History ⚡
  In contrast to other fields in the explore event and status history fields are returning multiple rows for a single shipment since a shipment goes through multiple events or status in its lifetime.

• Holiday Impact
  Especially for lead time calculation it can be helpful to filter out shipments where the lead time might be affected by public holidays. For this purpose we integrated a yes/no field and the names of holidays that impact the individual shipment. The rules for the holiday tag are as follows:

  • There is a public nation-wide holiday in the warehouse country between
    planned pickup and first hub scan (FHS), OR

  • There is a public nation-wide holiday in the consumer country between
    first hub scan (FHS) and first delivery attempt (FDA), OR

  • There is a public nation-wide holiday in the carrier country between
    first hub scan (FHS) and first delivery attempt (FDA)

Shipment / Order Lead Times Section -Dynamic Lead Time Calculations

The new analytics explore enables a dynamic and customized way of calculating lead times and SLA fulfillment. You can select between various timestamps and conditions to calculate the lead time that best reflects the individual business case (see below for a business example). 

These selection fields are marked as  FILTER-ONLY FIELDS and are always located at the top of the lead time section in the field picker. They will therefore only show up in the filter section of the explore once selected and not in the data section or visualization. If you want to display multiple lead times in one visualization (e.g. AVG FHS to FDA and AVG FDA to Delivered), you can select 'Shipment Lead Times 1' and 'Shipment Lead Times 2' and even add 'Order Lead Times [1 & 2]'.

Lead Time Condition

The first field you need to consider is the Condition. The condition is defining the days included in the lead time calculation. Currently the following options are available:

• Mon to Fri

• Mon to Sat

• Mon to Sun

• Tue to Sat

By selecting Mon to Fri for example Saturdays and Sundays would be deducted from the calculation.
Due to the dynamic architecture the lead time calculation is built on we can easily add more options.

Service Level Agreement (SLA) Days Selection

The field SLA Days [Date Changes] enables you to make dynamic and individual SLA calculations in addition to the ones set-up in the portal settings (read here). If you select the field SLA Days [Date Changes] on the shipment level and enter no value, the SLA days from the settings in the portal are stored per default. To analyse SLAs on the order level, you always have to enter a value in the filter. 

The field SLA Days [Date Changes]  is directly connected and only needs to be used with the SLA Fulfilment [%] measure (see below). 

With this you are able to define different SLAs for different lead times individually. A common business case for this are different SLAs for Pickup to FDA and FHS to FDA. The field is a number only field. If a string is used no SLA fulfilment will be calculated. The same is true if no days are specified. 

If you for example select 4 as SLA agreement and then calculate the SLA Fulfilment [%] for the lead time FHS to FDA you will get the percentage of shipments that were delivered within 4 days from FHS to FDA taken into consideration the condition specified.

Timestamp Selection

The fields  and  Timestamp - To are setting the start and end point for lead time calculation. 

If you need to calculate the time from pickup to first delivery attempt you would set the Timestamp - From filter to Pickup and the Timestamp - To field to First Delivery Attempt [FDA] 

Default Settings

If you do not set the condition and/or the timestamp filters Analytics will still calculate lead times. The lead times will then be calculated based on the default settings listed in the table below. 

Lead Time Measures & Dimensions

Within each lead time section in the field picker you will find the different lead time measures you need to select for measuring lead times. The values are of course based on the condition and timestamps selected (see above).

• Date Changes [AVG]
  Date changes are not taking into account the different times of day. It is the most common KPI for lead time calculations. In a descriptive way this lead time equals the number of ‘midnights’ between start and end time.
  Example: A shipment has a FHS on day A 13:00 and a FDA on day C 18:45. The number of date changes for the FHS to FDA lead time is 2.

• Hours [AVG]
  This measures gives you the average number of hours. They are not taking into account the minutes. That means the hours are not rounded in any way.
  Example: A shipment has a FHS on day A 13:00 and a FDA on day C 18:45. The number of hours for the FHS to FDA lead time is 53.

• Days [AVG]
  The day measure is based on the hour measure divided by 24. For a shipment with a hour measure of 24 the day measure would be 1.
  Example: A shipment has a FHS on day A 13:00 and a FDA on day C 18:45. The number of days for the FHS to FDA lead time is 2.2.

• Cluster - Date Changes [#]/Cluster - Date Changes [%]
  Depending on the condition and timestamps selected these measures give you the number or share of shipments where the selected lead time in date changes is either ≤1 or ≤2 or ≤3.
  Example: You can calculate the I+2 ratio (percentage of shipments with an FDA within 2 days from FHS) by simply selecting the lead time FHS to FDA and the measure “Share +2 Shipments [%]”.

• SLA Fulfillment [%]
  Shipments and orders can have a specified SLA. However, those SLAs are of course also dependent on the lead time you measure. This measure takes the selected lead time [date changes] and calculates for each shipment if the specified SLA days (SLA Days [Date Changes]) was fulfilled. 

• Clustered Date Changes
  This dimension enables you to cluster shipments/orders into different lead time clusters. This helps you with questions like “Which % of shipments was delivered within 2 days”. Simply select cluster dimension and the shipment percentage measure to get the results on this question.

• Promised Delivery Fulfillment [%] - Order Lead Times only
  For orders a promised delivery date can be specified. This measure calculates the average percentage of orders where the promised delivery date was kept. The calculation is based on FDA dates of the connected shipments and only takes into account outbound shipments as well as orders where all shipments have an FDA.

Rules for Lead Time Calculation

The following procedure / rules apply in the lead time calculations:

1. A lead time can not be negative

2. The lead time is 0 when Timestamp - From is later than (≥) Timestamp - To

3. The lead time is NULL (i.e. empty; ≠ 0) when either of the timestamps is NULL

4. The timestamps are not rounded (date changes do not take into account the hour of day and hours do not take into account the minutes)

5. If Days to Exclude ∈ [Timestamp - From,Timestamp - To] then we deduct the number of occurrences of the days to exclude from the original lead time

Lead Time Calculation in UTC ⚡

To enable lead time calculations across different time zones all lead times are calculated based on universal time zone UTC. However, this might lead to confusion regarding results of the date changes lead time as lead times in Analytics are shown in the individual time zone, normally CET. You can check your time zone setting in the top right corner within the explore. Please see the example below for an explanation. 

As you can see this issue is only concerning timestamps 1 hour before midnight in winter times and 2 hours before midnight during summer times. Therefore this is currently an edge case issue. If you want to avoid unexpected calculations you can change the time zone in Analytics individually from your default time zone to UTC as shown on the right. 

We will have an eye on this issue and might change to lead time calculation within CET or make it another parameter for lead time calculation.

Business Example - Calculating Lead Times for Mondial Relay and Colissimo

It occurs quite often that you need to analyze the difference between two carriers in terms of lead time calculation. However, when looking at those two carriers you also need to take into consideration that both of them have a different service level: While Colissimo delivers between Monday and Friday Mondial Relay delivers between Tuesday and Saturday. With the dynamic lead time calculation you can now take this into consideration.

Claim Service by 7S Section

This section is brand new and it collects all the data related to claims submitted via Parcel Finder. It includes 5 dimensions and 3 measures. 

New dimensions are:

• Created Date: it reflects the date the claim was submitted to the system. Just like in the shipment or order section, you can choose between different time formats (date, week, week of year...)
• Damage Description: it collects all the damage descriptions given during the submission of the claims. 
• Net Value: value of the claims submitted  converted to Euro. 
• Type: it differentiates between the three types of claims that can be submitted: 
  • Investigation
  • Partial damage
  • Whole damage

New measures are:

• AVG Value [EUR]:It calculates the average value of the selected claims
• Count [#]:It adds up the number of claims
• Total Value [EUR]:It adds up the value of the claims

To be able to start filtering on claims dimensions and creating Looks and Dashboards, it is important to first filter all these shipments that have a claim filed. To do so, navigate to the Shipment section and search for Tags > Claim (Yes/No). Filtering by Claim Tag with value 'Yes' will give you as a result all the shipments that have been claimed. 

Combining these dimensions with others such as carrier or location, you can get relevant dashboards to monitor your performance and get extra information on which carriers or regions incur the highest amounts of claims. You can, as well, monitor the value of claims submitted or run specific reports based on the claim type. 

Good to Know

• Consider the default values for the lead time condition and timestamps. Most of the times there is actually no need from your side to specify anything.

• With dynamic lead time calculation on order level it is possible to calculate the warehouse performance on a very detailed level

• Lead times are calculated in UTC to make lead time calculations across different time zones possible. However, this might lead to confusion with the date change lead time. You might get unexpected results.