Gramener’s advisory team helped USCS breakdown the challenge and tackled it in the following way:

Create a roadmap of USCS’s high-impact initiatives

Take initiatives through rapid experimentations

The chosen initiatives at USCS were taken through a series of rapid data science experimentations. These were based on Gramener’s ‘innovation funnel’ approach. Piloted at USCS’s warehouses, the qualified initiatives that garnered good business impact were moved to production.

Gramener worked with USCS technology team to create the right data science processes, onboard the skilled personnel, and deploy production-ready solutions. This has led to 3 data science applications.

Moving ML solutions to the production stage

Based on the results, 3 data science applications were rolled out across 40+ warehouses. The first solution to be rolled out was the intelligent appointment scheduler. This predictive AI solution helped USCS warehouse teams to identify ideal appointment slots every day to keep the warehouse optimally staffed and achieve the best turn times on warehouse pickups. With a 16% improvement in turn times, the experimentation was picked for large scale deployment.

Constant monitoring and measuring ROI

With support from USCS leadership, its technology teams integrated the solutions with business processes. This helped in the widespread adoption of the solutions. In fact, Q2 2021 saw over 80% adoption in a few of the largest USCS warehouses.

Gramener enabled the adoption of data science solutions by sharing industry best practices, educating the users, improving the ease of use and building ground-level support. The business value generated was tracked and quantified using an ROI framework.

Setting up for the next phase of transformation

Gramener has assisted USCS in setting up a governance committee with institutionalized processes in place. This could help achieve repeatable outcomes from the data science transformation being carried out at USCS.

The organization continues to scope out data science initiatives. The leadership team drives the initiatives by storytelling the vision and highlighting its importance across the organization.

In a phase-wise manner, USCS is extending this partnership with Gramener in three major areas – transportation, automation, and digitization.