Case Study: Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) achieves faster, near-real-time decision-making and improved asset utilization with Teradata Warehouse

Burlington Northern Santa Fe - Customer Case Study

Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF), one of the largest U.S. freight railroads, needed to merge two separate data‑warehousing initiatives and dozens of disparate transactional systems after its 1995 merger. The company sought a single, scalable enterprise data warehouse to deliver consistent, near‑real‑time data and fast ad‑hoc analytics for thousands of users to improve equipment utilization, operations and revenue management.

BNSF deployed a Teradata enterprise data warehouse (10‑node Intel system with Teradata Database) plus BI/OLAP tools and professional services to create a single source of truth. The system gave ~8,000 users fast access to detailed analytics, driving better asset utilization, lower operating costs, improved pricing and tax substantiation, a 98% on‑time intermodal guarantee, NAR reporting cut from three days to 20 minutes, and an estimated $3.6M annual benefit from the Revenue Single Source initiative.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF)

Phil Gollhofer

Data Warehousing Manager