Yamato Logistics (HK) Streamlines Its Data for Increased Business Visibility, Analytics, and Insights to Innovate Its Logistics Operations

Every day, the iconic black cat (kuro-neko) logo of the Yamato Group can be seen all over Hong Kong’s bustling streets and ports as Yamato Logistics (HK) goes about its business of
international freight forwarding, door-to-door delivery, and other logistics services. The scale and complexity of these services generates vast amounts of data from customers, transactions, business processes, and supply chains. Furthermore, the company’s growth in areas like ecommerce means the volume of data its managing is increasing rapidly.

However, extracting and processing data was a slow manual monthly exercise at Yamato Logistics (HK). Its finance and accounting teams would take several days to extract and transform data in spreadsheets before distributing it to different business units for report generation needs. The amount of manual effort involved in this process meant this exercise could only be carried out once per month.

To handle its data as efficiently as it handles its packages, Yamato Logistics (HK) decided to migrate its applications from an on-premises infrastructure to the AWS Cloud. Samson Yu, executive officer and IT general manager at Yamato Logistics (HK), says, “We had many limitations running our servers on premises, which was weighing down our processes and negatively impacting our service speed and quality. Plus, we wanted to improve our data storage and management so we could leverage data for faster analysis.”
 

Yamato Logistics (HK) migrated its business-critical applications to run on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, followed by redesigning and rebuilding its applications with serverless technology. It then engaged with AWS Partner Nextlink Technology to build a data pipeline for various projects, starting with its freight management system (FMS). Samson says, “We lacked the expertise needed to build data pipelines. By working with Nextlink, we created a custom solution for our FMS in just two months and learned how to build pipelines for future projects ourselves.”

Yamato Logistics (HK) uses Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) as a data lake, which stores about 5 GB of raw data daily. Data is then processed and cataloged using AWS Glue and becomes immediately available for search and query on Amazon Athena without complex installation or setup. In addition, the company uses Amazon QuickSight to create serverless dashboards in minutes via native integrations with Amazon S3 and Amazon Athena.

Yamato Logistics (HK)'s data is now automatically updated and available daily instead of monthly. This automated process saves around three working days per month, freeing multiple teams from laborious work on spreadsheets.

Samuel Lai, IT project manager at Yamato Logistics (HK), explains, "Previously, our management teams had to wait until the end of the month to receive sales data for report generation. Now, they have access to automated sales reports and can explore data through interactive dashboards on demand."
 

With AWS, Yamato Logistics (HK)’s data is streamlined, available, and transparent, improving business visibility and allowing it to generate valuable insights for innovation. The improved visibility also provides opportunities for Yamato Logistics (HK) to revamp its existing business processes based on readily available data. With better and faster visibility, Yamato Logistics (HK) can now forecast upcoming demand and allocate its resources—such as containers, trucks, and operators—accordingly.

Yamato Logistics (HK) plans to take advantage of the user-friendly, interactive dashboards in Amazon QuickSight to cater to the distinct needs of each of its business units. “We want to provide a more business-centric dashboard, including details like process visibility and key performance indicators, for different business units to view and use on a daily basis,” says Samson. “For example, our freight forwarding business could visualize container shipment information for each of its customers, while the local delivery team could visualize courier routing information on a map of Hong Kong.”

The company is also exploring how it can further leverage data with AWS machine learning to predict future trends, shipping volumes, and sales, so it can remain ahead of changing business needs. Samson concludes, “Our goal is to predict logistics trends so we can analyze and find patterns to create new business opportunities. We want to create a data-driven culture in our company, and using AWS helps us achieve that.”