"Monarch is in active use within our branch operations as well as accounting and finance. There is no easier solution to access and analyze customized enterprise data critical to the company's success."

 

Loomis, Fargo & Co. is the U.S. leader in the cash handling services industry, best known for its armored car cash transport services. The company has over 200 operat­ing locations, 8,000 employees and a fleet of approximately 3,000 armored and other vehicles. The company is the U.S. division of a global cash handling services leader, to be rebranded internationally as Loomis.

Loomis' origins date back to 1852, in the days of the Wild West, Pony Express riders, and the Alaskan Gold Rush. Just as the challenges of these wide open frontiers were tamed, so too Loomis has tamed its reporting and data challenges today, using Monarch.

"I use Monarch on a daily basis to help effectively manage our business," says Jon Donohoo, Western Manager of Operations for Loomis. "Monarch is in active use within our branch operations as well as accounting and finance. There is no easier solution to access and analyze customized enterprise data critical to the company's success."

"Loomis uses Oracle ERP for its operations and financial management," says Jon. "Oracle provides a large selection of existing reports, but we need many different views of our data, as well as combinations of data from different modules. It is, possible, of course, to design custom reports, but that would result in an unmanageable number of reports. Plus, with many custom reports running at once, the performance of the Oracle system would be greatly impacted."

"That's where Monarch comes in. Monarch mines and combines the data we need from Oracle reports we know, trust, and have already paid for. We get the customized data we need, quickly and easily, and can export the data to Excel at any time."

Perhaps Loomis' single most critical data need is profitability reporting by route. "At the conclusion of an armored car route, we complete a 'debriefing,'" explains Jon. "We check and record all work performed for the route, including time spent at each stop. We also consolidate and compare actual cash collected with the cash amount each customer reported. Oracle does a good job capturing all of this data, as well as allocating certain variable and fixed costs."

"There is no single existing Oracle report with all of this data for the profitability analysis we need. However, several existing Oracle reports do, together, contain the data. Using Monarch, that's all we need! Monarch mines and combines the data from these existing Oracle revenue and expense reports to produce precisely the profitability data we are looking for, with no new programming of any kind necessary. We can also export data at any time to Excel. "

"Thanks to Monarch, we can easily analyze and compare revenue, direct labor costs, vehicle costs and more, by branch, by route, by individual stop. Monarch helps us identify unprofitable routes and customers, enabling timely corrective action. In some cases, simply changing the sequence of stops will save time and increase profit. Monarch helps us identify such opportunities quickly. As a result, we have achieved a generous increase in overall route profitability."

Another issue critical to Loomis' success is minimizing employee turnover. "Loomis' business is highly labor intensive; labor is by far our largest single operational expense," says Jon. "The cost and time necessary to properly train a new employee to ensure correct work and the highest possible level of safety is quite high."

"Monarch is a leap forward on many fronts: new Excel functionality, new collaboration tools, and new report mining power to mine data from more complex reports. Monarch will expand our productivity even further."

"In-depth analysis of payroll data is essential to identify and solve employee turnover issues quickly," Jon adds, "but this data is buried within reports provided by Ceridian, our payroll processing service. But, again with Monarch, we easily mine the data from the Ceridian payroll reports, no matter how complex the report layout might be. There is no other programming or custom data work necessary!"

"Thanks to Monarch, I can quickly review employee turnover and average salaries and wages by branch and department code. This information helps me identify employee turnover issues and determine their cause. Any success in reducing employee turnover goes straight to the bottom line."

"Monarch is also in constant use within Loomis' accounting and finance function," Jon says. "Monarch is used to mine and analyze data from our receivables aging reports, sorting and summarizing data by largest amount due and longest aged amounts. This has enabled much more focused and productive collection activities. We also use Monarch with other accounting reports to reduce billing errors, analyze and correctly apply cash deposits, and effectively manage payables."

"Thanks to the ease in which Monarch allowed us to mine, analyze and export accounting data, we easily exceed our branch accounting KPI's. That's impressive proof of the efficiency and value Monarch offers accounting and finance departments!"

"The Monarch promises even further improvements to Loomis' ability to access and analyze data. We are especially interested in Monarch new Excel-related features, including exporting Monarch summary data with subtotals and grand totals as Excel formulas," says Jon. "Monarch is a leap forward on many fronts: new Excel functionality, new collaboration tools, and new report mining power to mine data from more complex reports. Monarch will expand our productivity even further."

Asked to describe the impact of Monarch on Loomis' business, Jon says, "Monarch is a key technology asset for our company. Monarch has enabled my success and the success of my colleagues. Thanks to Monarch, we have the customized data we need for the most critical aspects of our business in the simplest manner possible."

"Monarch's combination of data power and unrivaled ease of use has helped our company achieve improved profitability and new business efficiencies we would not otherwise have."

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