DRIVING ARI FLEET MANAGEMENT WITH REAL-TIME ANALYTICS AutomotiveResources International, better known as simple ARI, is the world'slargest privately-held company for vehicle fleet managementservices. ARI is headquartered in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey and has2,500 employees and offices throughout North America, Europe, theUK and Hong Kong. The company manages more than 1,000,000 vehiclesin the US, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Europe. Businesses thatneed vehicles for shipments (trucks, vans, cars, ships, and railcars) may choose to manage their own fleet of vehicle or they mayoutsource fleet management to companies such as ARI whichspecialize in these services. ARI manages the entire life cycle andoperation of a fleet of vehicles for its customers, from up-frontspecification and acquisition to resale, including financing,maintenance, fuel management, and risk management services such asdriver safety training and accident management. ARI also maintainssix call centers in North America that operate 24/7, 365 days ayear to support customers' drivers, and suppliers who expect accessto real-time actionable information. Providing this information hasbecome increasingly challenging. Operating a single largecommercial vehicle fleet generates high volumes of complex data,such as data on fuel consumption, maintenance, licensing andcompliance, A fuel transaction, for example, requires data on statetaxes paid, fuel grade, total sale, amount sols, and time and placeof purchase. A simple brake job and preventive maintenance checkupgenerates dozens of records for each component that is serviced.Each part and service performed on a vehicle is tracked usingAmerican Trucking Association codes. ARI collects and analyzes over14,000 pieces of data per vehicle. Then multiply the data byhundreds of fleets, some with up to 10,000 vehicles, all operatingsimultaneously throughout the globe, and you'll have an idea of theenormous volume of data ARI needs to manage, both for itself andfor its customers. ARI provided its customers with detailedinformation about their fleet operations, but the type ofinformation it could deliver was very limited. For example, ARIcould generate detailed reports on line-item expenditures, vehiclepurchases, maintenance records, and other operational informationpresented as simple spreadsheets, charts, or graphs, but it was notpossible to analyze all the data to spot trends and makerecommendations. ARI was able to analyze data customer by customer,but it was not able to aggregate data across its entire customerbase. For instance, if ARI was managing a pharmaceutical company'svehicle fleet, its information systems could not benchmark thatfleet's performance against others in the industry. That type ofproblem required too much manual work and time, and still didn'tdeliver the level of insight management thought was possible.What's more, in order to create reports, ARI had to go throughinternal subject matter experts in various aspects of fleetoperations, who were called "reporting power users". Every requestfor information was passed to these power users. A request for areport would take 5 days to fill. If the report was unsatisfactory,it would go back to the report writer to make changes. ARI'sprocess for analyzing its data was extremely drawn out. Inmid-2011, ARI implemented SAP BusinessObjects Explorer to givecustomers the enhanced ability to access data and run their ownreports. SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is a business intelligencetool that enables business users to view, sort and analyze businessintelligence data. Users search through data sources using aniTunes-like interface. They do not have to create queries to searchthe data and results are shown with a chart that indicates the bestinformation match. The graphical representation of results changesas the user asks further questions of the data. In early 2012, ARIintegrated SAP BusinessObjects Explorer with HANA, SAP's in-memorycomputing platform that is deplorable as an on-premise appliance(hardware and software) or in the cloud. HANA is optimized forperforming real-time analytics and handling very high volumes ofoperational and transactional data in real time. HANA's in-memoryanalytics queries data stored in random access memory (RAM) insteadof on a hard disk or flash storage. Things started happeningquickly after that. When ARI's controller wanted an impact analysisof the company's top 10 customers, SAP HANA produced the result in3 to 31/2 seconds. In ARI's old systems environment, this taskwould have been assigned to a power user versed in using reportingtools, specifications would have to be drawn up and a programdesigned for that specific query, a process that would have takenabout 36 hours. Using HANA, ARI is now able to quickly mine itsvast data resources and generate predictions based on the result.For example, the company can produce precise figures on what itcosts to operate a fleet of a certain size over a particular routeacross specific industries during a certain type of weather andpredict what the impact of changes in any of the variables. And itcan do so nearly as easily as providing customers with a simplehistory of their expenditures on fuel. With such helpfulinformation ARI provides more value to its customers. HANA has alsoreduced the time required for each transaction handled by ARI'scall centers- from the time a call center staffer takes a call toretrieving and delivering the requested information-5 percent.Since call center staff account for 40 percent of ARI's directoverhead, that time reduction translates into major cost savings.ARI plans to make some of these real-time reporting and analyticcapabilities available on mobile devices, which will enablecustomers to instantly approve a variety of operation procedures,such as authorizing maintenance repairs. Customers will also beable to use the mobile tools for instant insight into their fleetoperations, down to a level of detail such as a specific vehicles'stire history. Question: Describe the changes in the business as aresult of adopting HANA.