Case Studies

XTRA Lease had introduced trailer tracking services to its fleet in 2000, providing enhanced visibility and control over fleet usage to its customers.  The company identified an opportunity to enhance its market-leading position by providing an even higher level of service, including decision-making tools, enhanced tracking systems, and a sophisticated web-based interface to allow clients immediate visibility into trailer usage, location, and status.  Selection of a new third-party wireless business provider allowed XTRA Lease to think strategically and develop a comprehensive application platform that would rapidly adjust to changing business and market conditions.

Solution:

In July of 2006, XTRA Lease partnered with Oakwood and the new third-party wireless business provider.  Oakwood’s role was to develop and implement business-to-business (B2B) integration, a purchase order application, and an integrated billing application.  The first phase of the system was released in March 2007, along with a new web-based user interface that enables XTRA Lease customers to immediately hone in on trailer dormancy and utilization, and to locate trailers quickly. 

Built using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006, the B2B Integration application provides a series of integration points to connect XTRA Lease and their third-party wireless business provider.  These integration points are used to process events such as device installation, rental/lease agreements, conditional sales, purchase order requests and confirmations, return merchandise authorizations for defective devices, single sign-on, device health monitoring, trailer entity changes, management of mobile features, and demo contracts.  Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) was implemented to provide enhanced performance reporting, and an exception handling portal was developed so that operations users can quickly identify and deal with problems as they arise.

The Purchase Order application is a smart client application that allows XTRA Lease to manage purchase orders issued to the third-party wireless business provider, using XML Web Services within XTRA Lease’s service-oriented architecture (SOA) framework.  The Integrated Billing component provides reports utilized for capitalization, depreciation, and allocation purposes.  Billing data is retrieved by BizTalk, then loaded into a database using SQL Server Integration Services and the SOA framework, after which the data is processed through XTRA Lease’s line-of-business systems.

Benefits:

While XTRA Lease has set itself apart in the industry by providing the enhanced Trailer Tracking Service, the underlying systems have provided significant benefit as well.  Processes that used to take days or even weeks now take minutes with the new B2B solution provided by Microsoft BizTalk Server and developed by Oakwood.  XTRA Lease’s expanded service have contributed to a unique brand image for the organization and helped to further establish XTRA Lease as a leader in the trailer leasing industry.