CSC Helps Transport Companies Share the Road

To provide its customers with greater value, YRC Worldwide, the largest less-than-truckload carrier in North America, decided it was time for two of its subsidiaries — Roadway Express and Yellow Transportation — to share more than the highway. Through merging the networks and operations of two of the most recognized transportation carriers on the road, a new powerhouse brand — YRC — was born.

Less-than-truckload carriers transport goods weighing less than 10,000 pounds from several shippers loaded onto one trailer. YRC wanted to gain new efficiencies in its operations during a decline in the U.S. economy. In 2008, recognizing that its two carriers used different processes, systems, networks and brands, YRC looked for a company to help integrate and launch a newly branded carrier.

With our 15-year history of supporting more than 200 merger and acquisition projects, CSC was ready to help. We provided counsel on merger strategy, contingency planning, program management, and governance and organizational change management. The CSC team also advised specific functional areas, including operations, sales and marketing, IT, revenue management, and finance and accounting.

Accelerating the integration

One of CSC’s major contributions to the integration project occurred as we provided counsel on YRC’s integration direction. Initially, the project timeline was set at 18 months. But when it became apparent the economic recession was deeper and longer lasting than anticipated, the company decided to significantly accelerate the integration. CSC helped YRC cut 10 months off the project schedule and approximately $20 million in associated costs.

Another contribution came from our Business Impact Assessment (BIA) tool, which is part of CSC’s Catalyst methodology. As a key component of Catalyst’s Organizational Change for Enterprise Resource Planning toolkit, the BIA change planning tool gets practitioners off to a rapid start, enabling them to think about process changes and the steps needed to accomplish their goals. Because of BIA’s flexibility, CSC was able to tailor the tool, enabling YRC to evaluate 535 different processes and comprehensively plan to the activity level all of the changes that would occur once Yellow and Roadway merged.

SWAT teams formed

To handle the approaching cutover, CSC created the ISC — which ran 24x7 up to, through and post-cutover — to give supervisor-level personnel and above the ability to get questions directly answered by core functional SWAT teams. The center also enabled the YRC-CSC team to track all of the 356 activities directly tied to the cutover, ranging from IT systems to validation that propane tanks in each of the terminals had been returned.

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