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reduction in labour costs
audit score after Avetta (up from 1/100)
contractors qualified and managed
A leading railway operator partnered with Avetta to automate contractor pre-qualification and supply chain management, cutting labour costs by 80% and achieving faster, safer and more efficient operations.
This railway leader operates a fleet of 407 three-carriage train sets over 837 kilometres of track, providing over 14,000 services each week and carrying 415,000 passengers each weekday. Over the course of a year, its train fleet travels 30 million kilometres and provides more than 228 million customer boardings.
Qualifying and managing some 3,500 contractors was a massive job that the organisation simply wasn’t adequately prepared for. Executives discovered that management of the supply chain – including pre-qualification of contractors and audits – was lacking.
The problem wasn’t simply a lack of oversight. To the extent that the company pre-qualified and managed its supply chain, the process was simply inefficient. The pre-qualification process was a basic, manual and labour-intensive process. It relied on paper records, was handled entirely in-house, and lacked the automation necessary to manage thousands of third-party workers efficiently. Various people across the company spent a good deal of time on this process. And because it was difficult to share information, there was a lot of duplication, both internally and with the supplier community.
“The system was primitive. And we realised we couldn’t continue to do things that way.”
– Supply Development Manager
The idea of developing a rail sector solution was discussed with every supply chain risk management vendor that the company approached. In explaining this vision to prospective partners, the team was surprised to find that all of them resisted the idea of working with them in a truly collaborative partnership except one. “Avetta was the only company willing to work with us to develop more functionality in a long-term collaborative approach to the product,” he says. “Only Avetta embraced our vision of a rail sector solution.” This openness to the idea of collaboration was an important reason the team chose Avetta for its supply chain risk management solution.
That was not the only reason, of course. Ease of use was another key differentiator of the Avetta solution. The company wanted a solution that end users would actually use. He recalls that “a couple of the solutions we looked at from other providers were very clunky. We thought that we would turn users away from the system, which defeats the whole purpose. We’d end up with a risk management tool that sits in the background with no one actually using it.” The organisation found the Avetta solution to be very accessible and very easy to use, especially from the user’s point of view.
In addition, Avetta provided other core capabilities and functionality that were needed, including reporting, dashboards and rich risk management. Of the five vendors considered, Avetta met the broadest range of requirements. After a rigorous process and proper due diligence, the company selected Avetta in the summer of 2014 and went live with the solution by September.
Avetta supported the go-live process by collaborating with the railway leader to inform contractors and suppliers about the new system. Avetta called each one, sent out initial mailings and worked with the internal team on programme education. This “two-pronged attack”, with efforts from both companies, helped underscore the importance of the initiative and led to a faster sign-up rate. It also reinforced the collaborative approach so important to the organisation.
The impact in terms of cost savings and potential cost savings was equally impressive. As part of the justification for sourcing contractor pre-qualification and management, the team estimated the number of hours it would take to do that work internally. They calculated that it would require six full-time employees on a continuous basis to manage the thousands of contractors and suppliers currently working with the railway leader, given the influx of new workers and ongoing yearly reviews and audits. To properly qualify that many contractors into the system internally would have meant that those six employees would be working 40 to 50 hours for at least six months. This effort would have been massive. With Avetta, the railway staff spends just 10 hours per week on pre-qualification – an eighth of the time that they would otherwise spend.
While the Avetta solution is relatively new to the company, its impact has already been felt. In October 2014, the Federal Safety Commission performed another audit on the business unit that had failed a year earlier. This time, says the Supply Development & Performance Manager, “We got 99 points out of 100, thanks to all the work that was done within the contract safety management committee, and the fact that we’d engaged with Avetta. It was clear we were turning the ship around.”
“When everyone’s green-flagged, we can immediately interact with them and know they’re at the level we want them to be at. In addition, the ability to access the greater Avetta network gives us more options when we need to respond quickly if we can’t find the right resource in our existing supply base.”
– Supply Development Manager
This railway leader operates a fleet of 407 three-carriage train sets over 837 kilometres of track, providing over 14,000 services each week and carrying 415,000 passengers each weekday. Over the course of a year, its train fleet travels 30 million kilometres and provides more than 228 million customer boardings.
Avetta’s Workforce Management solution gives you real-time visibility and control over your workforce and assets. Easily verify worker qualifications, ensure only competent, trained personnel access your sites, and meet all safety and legislative requirements with confidence – all while reducing risk and improving operational efficiency.
