双语：且看DHL物流集团如何有效管理大数据

核心提示：DHL快递公司采用合适的全球成本核算系统，扭转了数据质量下降的趋势，并因此增加了盈利。

【据CFO网站消息】一位主计长说，耐心和勤于清理数据是实施一个基于全球活动的成本核算的关键。

几年前，DHL快递的数据质量处在一个螺旋式下降的状况。每个人都知道这是错误的，所以没有人努力改善它。甚至没人注意这个问题，这只能更恶化了数据质量。

“我们是在一个竞争非常激烈的行业，“DHL公司的运营控制部副总裁格雷姆•艾特金在周一的CFO网站企业绩效管理会议上告诉参会的财务总监。“我们必须在激烈的竞争中使自已与众不同，而且最大的一个优势是数据。我们收集的数据很多而且客户要求的也很多。”很明显必须要改变一些事情。

此前，DHL快递公司——德国邮政集团的子公司——在200个国家部署并使用微软的一个成本核算工具。艾特金说该工具使用员工访谈的方式分配本地的成本，询问快递员每天如何花费他们的时间。他说，在过去，当没有数据可用时，一个公司在跨国公司中不可能有一个统一的成本和价格体系。

艾特金说，“我们只能根据可用的信息建立成本模型。没有顺从财务结果。我们不可能制定出标准的装运或者提货成本，因为我们没有数据。我们无法区分固定成本和可变成本”。

艾特金和他的同事们意识到，通过从DHL服务对象的公司交易收集和分析数据，当解释成本和定价时，DHL快递可以获得优势。一个符合企业的全球损益表的单一全球成本核算系统 ,将会提高定价管理，增加盈利能力的提高。

这就是他们告诉DHL快递管理委员会的内容。艾特金和他的团队在其业务案例中总结的唯一投资回报是，降低从本地既有旧系统转移到新全球系统所需的运营成本。他告诉管理委员会委员，真正的回报是企业现在使用的用于推动战略定价决策的高质量数据。

他谨慎地说“这是一个巨大的投资，而且我们没有过量使用，也没有承诺过多。我们的业务案例只承诺我们可以证明节省的钱“。艾特金说他也够幸运，有一位相信数据重要性的首席财务官支持他们，还有一位CEO也知道数据的价值。

被称为INSIGHT的成本计算系统, 为DHL在其网络内的每批装运都带来了成本和盈利能力。因此，对话从客户的盈利能力是否确切转移到要如何处理数据。“没有人为此争辩，因为他们知道我们可以证明如何分配成本，” 艾特金说。“现在我们看看客户合规。如果客户承诺每年给我们100万美元的合同，并得到了相应的价格，但却只给我们59000美元，我们现在与客户讨论时就有了数据支持。”

英语原文：

How DHL’s Big Data Boosts Performance

Patience and clean-data diligence were the keys in implementing a global activity-based costing system, a controller recalls.

PHILADELPHIA — A few years ago, DHL Express was in a downward spiral of data quality. Everyone knew it was wrong, so nobody made an effort to improve it. No one even looked at it, which just made the quality worse.

“We’re in a very competitive industry,” Graeme Aitkin, vice president of business controlling at the company, told a room of financial executives at CFO’s Corporate Performance Management conference on Monday. “We have to distinguish ourselves from the competition, and one of the biggest advantages is data. We collect a lot and the customer demands a lot.”

Clearly something had to change.

Previously, the company had used a Microsoft costing tool deployed locally in the 200 countries in which DHL Express, a subsidiary of Germany’s Deutsche Post, operates. Aitkin said the tool used employee interviews to localize cost allocations, asking couriers how they spent their time every day. In the old days, he said, when the data wasn’t available, it wasn’t possible for a company to have a unified costing and pricing system across a global company.
“We could only build cost models on what we had available,” said Aitkin. “Nothing reconciled to the financial results. We couldn’t produce a standard cost of shipment or pickup because we didn’t have the data. We couldn’t distinguish fixed and variable costs.”

Aitkin and his colleagues realized that by collecting and analyzing good-quality data from all of its transactions with the companies it serves, DHL Express could gain an edge when it came to accounting for cost and pricing. The consistency of a single, worldwide costing system that reconciled to the company’s global profit-and-loss statement would improve pricing management and enhance profitability improvement.

That’s what they told the DHL Express board of management. The only return on investment Aitkin and his team included in their business case was for operational cost reduc¬tions in switching from the local legacy systems to the global one. The true return, he told the audience, was the quality data the company now uses to drive strategic pricing decisions.

“It was a huge investment, and we didn’t overcommit and didn’t overpromise,” he cautioned. “Our business case only promised savings we could prove.” Aitkin was also fortunate enough, he said, to have the support of a CFO who believed in the importance of data, and a CEO who also knew the value of data.

The costing system, known as INSIGHT, produces for DHL Express the cost and profitability for every shipment in its network. As a result, conversations have shifted from whether a customer’s profitability data is accurate to how it is going to act on the data. “No one debates it because they know we can prove how the cost has been allocated,” Aitkin said. “Now we look at customer compliance. If a customer gets a price on the promise of giving us $1 million a year, but only giving us $59,000, we now have the data to back up our discussion with that customer.”