Rising fuel prices and other economic woes have logistics and transportation companies focused on cutting costs. That's why the industry is on board with business intelligence applications that show them where and how to save money.

In the InformationWeek 500 survey, 91% of transportation and logistics companies say they have BI tools widely deployed, compared with 76% for all companies. What's more, 46% in logistics and transportation plan to deliver better BI tools to employees in the coming year, compared with 34% of all respondents.

BNSF Railway has a Teradata data warehouse for analyzing operations data, but it's moving away from a "rearview mirror" approach to more predictive BI apps, says Jeff McIntyre, assistant VP of technology services. That includes a budget forecasting system, a demand forecasting system, and software that predicts the life span of locomotives and other assets.

When it comes to Web 2.0 development tools, just 9% of the industry have widely deployed them to their IT teams, compared with 24% of all respondents. Alaska Airlines CIO Robert Reeder says this will change, as more companies find they can reduce IT costs with Web 2.0 mashups. "We'll look at software in the future as more and more components that we integrate and put together," Reeder says, "as opposed to buying a whole stack of software."

Industry Snapshot: Logistics & Transportation