RTL CEO Yuri Vorontsov: "We are committed to innovation"

Innovative information technology is the key to success in the modern logistics market. Yuri Vorontsov, Chief Executive Officer of RTL Group, a leading company on the Russian market of vehicles deliveries, has told PortNews how the Group implements its own information system.

- Mr. Vorontsov, tell us what was the reason to introduce the company's own information system and about its ideology?

- This was a certain stage in its development when the company commenced shipping of imported vehicles to the country by car carriers with further transshipments at marine terminals instead of hauling by tractor trailers. Accordingly, this has brought about changes in the customs clearance scheme and in the logistics infrastructure. Some time ago, we realized that our breakthrough solutions became routine everyday work, the market stabilized, and its players occupied their market niche. Accordingly, the question arose how to further increase the business profitability, its effectiveness, to attract new customers and retain old ones. And the clients, for their part, always ask us about the possibility to reduce their costs. The company understood the need to create not just an operating accounting system but a solution, combining all supply chain participants and clients. This system should be a tool for the expertise of transactions and be able to simulate different scenarios in real time, giving the forecast for the immediate period, as their decisions will affect the final financial result and key performance indicators.

The basic idea is an exchange of information. If we do not share information, for example, about the situation at the terminals and we are not informed about the autos removal schedule, we will just ban car carriers calls to the terminal and our contractors will stop transportation of vehicles by tractor trailers - and all participants of the chain will turn out losers. Thanks to the exchange of information each participant sees what others do, which increases the overall efficiency of the entire supply chain. The better the port, warehouse are utilized the higher the vehicle fleet turnover so, naturally, the customer benefits, who eventually pays less but gets faster service.

All our actions will ultimately affect the cost of delivery to the end point, so that all are concerned, on the one hand, to minimize costs, but on the other - to gain profit, enough to invest in further development. Therefore, decision-making should be the most efficient and transparent to all, so the introduced system should be become a tool for this.

- What is the functionality of the system?

- It includes direct operational accounting, analytics and expertise, able to forecast key performance not only at the current situation, but also for future periods. These projections allow us to simulate the likely situation, depending on the adoption of certain decisions "at the moment." Thanks to it we will be able to make the best logistics solutions, being aware of what they will bring in the future.

- At what phase is now its implementation?

- Implementation of the system is divided into three main phases. Actually, we’ve completed the first two phases. At the first stage, all our services have been combined on a single platform. This is, above all, the management of terminals and logistics (including planning) and of a vehicles fleet, customs clearance and maintenance services (quality and CRM), without which the development of a complete logistics cycle is impossible (CRM includes a number of reports, and the quality must respond quickly to the situations occurring during the delivery and to ensure feedback).

Second phase - the closer integration of the operating part with analytics module, which involves making clear performance indicators for each phase of work. If we take for example the movement of vehicles fleet, the tractor with an auto-transport follows a specific route, taking autos from one point and hauling them to another. Accordingly, we define on this route a number of key indicators, such as stay time before loading, during loading, travelling time to the offloading point, the time of unloading operation and return trip. Having clearly defined guidelines for each leg of the route, we can know where we have delays. And working on these standards, we can gradually improve them more and more. In the end, we will come to that the tractor-trailer will be hauling as much as possible during a month. Because, for example, if the standard is exceeded by 15%, then everyone knows that it will affect both our benefit and other participants of the process.

Thus, the second phase should allow all the parties involved to get real-time information, and most importantly - to be able to respond to it by analyzing key performance indicators and receive corrective feedback.

The third phase is the creation of an expert system that will be capable of using available data to make predictions for the end of the period. In essence, the system will guide people in their daily work. This is the key thing, because the whole service, in fact, is built on the ability to manage information and to do it effectively. All decisions we make every day – the route of the tractor-trailer, how the trucks are placed at the terminal, the sequence of information submission for the customs clearance, ultimately determines the autos delivery price and hence the costs for the consumer.

- What application is used for this system?

- The system is based on Oracle application, which ensures very quick data processing. Oracle is a reliable and serious company and we are using its product any time we need accurate and reliable data processing, handling of large data volume at high speed.

We try to turn the entire process into work with the GUI - one for each of our unit. We do not have many different "windows" and there is no need to enter information in different places of the interface - the terminal operator can track in one window all processes – the tractor-trailer’s movements at the phases of loading operation, stay time in real time... The same thing with logistics. A logistics operator can open a page in our system and see all possible points of loading, the plan of customer’s cargo pick-up, and, consequently, he is able to manage the entire process. The same for the vehicles fleet. Even the drivers have access to the feedback interface so that they can receive instructions in real time and report on their activities. This also helps to avoid paper document workflow.

Generally, we try that the least of information would be entered manually. This is important, because this is a very large volume of information, we make hundreds of reports a week, get a lot of information for customs clearance, forecasts, descriptions of vehicles.  We have three stages of verification of the information before it is handed over to the user.

We have built one data center for all of our offices and departments in the country and abroad, with a possibility for bookings in real-time of all services. Even with outage in half of the city, with the Internet cut out, our office will continue to operate since the data processing center has its standby facility, synchronized without delay even for a minute. This efficiency is necessary because a lot may happen for this time, such as unloading a ferry.

Noteworthy, all applications are developed by specialists of RT, we do not copy someone else's software or acquire IT products from other companies, for its further upgrade. In our development, we focus primarily on the needs of the client, trying to foresee them by adopting the most innovative solutions.

Vitaly Chernov