Watkins Motor Lines' Extranet Recognized in Best Practice Award

Watkins Motor Lines was recently named a winner in MicroStrategy's "Best Practices in Business Intelligence," taking home the honors in the Best Extranet Deployment category. MicroStrategy Incorporated, a leading worldwide provider of business intelligence software, honored Watkins at their annual user conference early this month for achieving outstanding business performance in its category.

A leading transportation company, Watkins provides its customers with up-to-date information about shipments, delivery times and schedules via its extranet. 

MicroStrategy software powers the company's customer web reporting application, which supports approximately 12,000 Watkins customers and 250 account executives who use the Watkins' Web site. End users receive custom shipment schedules or real-time reports regarding their freight shipments, with data replicated from the mainframe to an IBM UDB DB2 database. Customers can chose to view standard reports or develop their own, using any of the 90-plus variables available. Once the report is delivered, it can then be viewed on demand or sent directly to a customer via a scheduled e-mail or fax. Watkins and its customers attest that the processes are extremely reliable and secure, and save users time and money.

With annual revenues approaching $1 billion, Watkins Motor Lines is the nation's largest privately held less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier and currently has more than 10,000 employees and contractors, and operates approximately 2,900 company and contractor-owned tractors and 10,000 trailers.