95% of legacy data successfully migrated
12 data table refresh cycle performed daily
1000+ hours saved on query refreshes
J.B. Hunt Masters the Momentum of Technology
J.B. Hunt, a Fortune 500 transportation and logistics company, has delivered excellence in supply chain solutions throughout North America for over 60 years. Their desired destination? Improved efficiency. The route? Modernizing their legacy data platform to Google Cloud’s data warehouse, BigQuery.
Data Availability You Can Drive Home
BigQuery Data Modernization
To provide the best-in-class service that J.B. Hunt is known for, they need to capture and maintain mountains of data. This means everything from order details to tracking updates to supply chain information must be stored, secured, and easily accessible from anywhere.
As part of their commitment to data modernization, J.B. Hunt identified several areas of opportunity where improvements could be made to their existing enterprise data warehouse (EDW). By migrating from an on-premises DB2 solution to a cloud data warehouse, they could quickly process greater volumes of data, eliminate data siloes to keep information centralized and arm stakeholders with near-real-time reports to make critical decisions in a timely fashion. Optimizing their data storage solution had the added benefits of eliminating redundant records, reducing latency and tackling technical debt.
Google Cloud was J.B. Hunt’s platform-of-choice for this undertaking, largely due to the benefits of their infrastructure and the reporting capabilities offered through BigQuery. They wanted an expert in data modernization to help them make the most of their migration. As a Google Cloud Premier Partner, TEKsystems was more than up to the task.
Revving the Engine to Race Forward
Data Modernization Plan and Optimization for Google Cloud
The first step to a successful data migration of this scale was prioritization. We worked with J.B. Hunt’s internal experts to identify the highest priority data tables, breaking down the entire migration plan into key milestones supported by our customer’s stakeholders. We then prepared a project backlog and performed a migration pilot test to ensure a successful strategy.
J.B. Hunt wanted to optimize their EDW to seamlessly integrate with their internal analytics and reporting tools. These tools would give them a competitive advantage by providing on-demand access to shipping reports and changes in pricing to their network of partners. Think: more efficient delivery turnaround, more accurate forecasting capabilities and improved operational support overall. By harnessing the power of BigQuery, we cleaned up their data, fixed broken integration processes and eliminated variances in logic across reporting silos.
Keeping Our Customer in the Driver’s Seat
Communication, Collaboration and Troubleshooting for Better Data
Our key focus: usage and adoption. We wanted J.B. Hunt’s users to immediately see the concrete benefits of this data modernization effort. To do this, we targeted a combination of the highest priority data tables alongside smaller, quicker projects. With this strategy, we gained buy-in from critical stakeholders and drove excitement within the business to quickly adopt the new data platform. We continued to tune our development strategy as we progressed, giving their team the opportunity to re-prioritize as needed.
Our direct involvement with the integration effort of this migration allowed us to gain critical insight into the reporting and processing challenges that J.B. Hunt faced as well as their business goals. This put us in a perfect position to offer strategic guidance for the future and make recommendations for internal technical skillset development that will ensure their long-term success.
of legacy data successfully migrated
data table refresh cycle performed daily
hours saved on query refreshes
Interested in a similar solution?
Similar attempts have been made to modernize our legacy environment through various vendors in the past but failed. This is our first success, and it’s a big one.
Real-World Results
The serverless infrastructure of J.B. Hunt’s new BigQuery solution will allow them to efficiently process greater volumes of data than their legacy, on-premises solution. Their table refresh process used to be performed on a nightly basis, but through BigQuery we were able to shorten this window to just two hours. We also optimized their query refresh rate, which will save them thousands of hours over time. In some cases, query refresh windows have been reduced by up to two and a half minutes. This will allow J.B. Hunt’s users access to near real-time data, empowering them to make smarter business decisions and improve the customer experience.
All this translates to numerous business improvements, including superior insight into final mile services, the enablement of self-service reporting and predictive analysis to inform their dynamic pricing capabilities. Now fueled by digestible streams of critical data, J.B. Hunt is in a better position than ever before to deliver best-in-class service to their customers.
