Online Benchmarking System for Transportation Providers

摘要

The advent of electronic commerce has placed additional pressure on transportation carriers and local delivery providers. In order to remain competitive and meet the increasing demand due to electronic commerce, transportation carriers must constantly evaluate their operations, management structures, information systems, and customer relations with respect to their competitors. Benchmarking is the typical approach to evaluating a company; however, benchmarking is time consuming and is often out of date as soon as the study is completed. In order to facilitate the benchmarking process, this project investigated the design, development, and implementation of an 'Online Benchmarking System' for transportation service providers. The main purpose of the system is to facilitate the benchmarking process through the use of Internet technologies. The system utilizes Active Service Pages, Hyper Text Markup Language scripting, and relational database technology to support the system. The system contains a comprehensive list of performance metrics that can be used by trucking service providers for tracking their performance. In addition, an online performance analysis based on Simple Multi-Attribute Rating Technique or SMART was implemented so that trucking service providers can evaluate their performance against competitors. Transport service providers who participate in this system can share information in a confidential manner and compare their performance with other participants.