Data Platform and AI Foundation for a UK Logistics Group

A UK logistics group operating a national fleet, multiple distribution centres and a growing parcel network had reached the limits of a fragmented analytics estate. Each business unit operated its own reporting, with three separate data warehouses, conflicting definitions of revenue and on-time performance, and AI initiatives launched in isolation by individual operational leaders. Board reporting was assembled through a manual end-of-month exercise that consumed significant finance and operations capacity, and the group had recently abandoned a generative AI pilot because the underlying data was insufficiently trusted. The new CEO had set a clear expectation: a single source of truth for operational and financial performance, a credible AI roadmap aligned to commercial priorities, and a measurable reduction in the cost of insight. There was no executive-level data ownership and no agreed data strategy at group level.

Intology was engaged on a Fractional CDO basis to establish data and AI foundations for the group. The first phase focused on governance: appointing data owners at executive level, agreeing a group-wide set of critical data elements with single definitions, and standing up a lightweight Data Council chaired by the COO. A target data platform was selected through a structured evaluation that considered total cost of ownership, integration with the existing operational systems and the group's cloud strategy, with a pragmatic decision to consolidate onto a single lakehouse architecture. The three legacy warehouses were rationalised over nine months with a clear retirement plan, materially reducing licence and run cost. An AI operating model was established covering use case intake, data readiness assessment, ethical review, deployment and value tracking. Three priority AI use cases were delivered in the first year alongside the platform work, focused on fleet utilisation, parcel routing and revenue assurance, each with a clear baseline and measured uplift.