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Case Study: Keep Mobile

Snapshot

Company: Keep Mobile
Service types: Dial-a-Ride, Group Travel
Subscription journeys:  60%
Number of vehicles: 10
Scheduled journeys per day: 200
Scheduled journeys per year:  73,000
Installed Trapeze products:  SNT
IT Environment: 4 peer-to-peer workstations on Windows NT and 95

Business Problem

Keep Mobile provides community transport services to the Wokingham District and Bracknell Forest Borough Council. Established in 1992, the organisation relies on a large number of volunteers to provide dial-a-ride and scheduled shopping and excursion trips in the area.

By 1997, bookings for on-demand journeys had risen substantially. Keep Mobile had to find a better way to manage the increase in passenger information and journey booking.

Goals

In its search for a computerised booking system, Keep Mobile set four criteria. The system needed to be:

• Affordable
• Able to generate required statistical reports for local authorities
• Easy-to-learn with minimum training, so that new volunteers could quickly be use it
• Expandable

Solution

Keep Mobile considered four completely different systems and found SNT (now Trapeze SNT) to be the only one which could support its criteria list.

SNT is a multi-user dial-a-ride booking system with additional capabilities for volunteer car schemes, dial-a bus schemes, group travel and excursions, as well as a combination of all of these services.

Results

Better management and improved accuracy of data such as passenger information, records for paid and volunteer drivers, and journey booking were some of the immediate benefits of utilising SNT software.

With one mouse click, call-takers are quickly able to view available time slots and immediately schedule the journey while the caller is still on the telephone.

Subscribed passenger information is easily retrieved, minimising re-keying and saving labour time. Special needs requirements such as walkers or wheelchair accessibility can also be flagged, and an appropriate accessible vehicle assigned.

Drivers are more informed through daily driver schedules that are printed from SNT, with pick-up and destination details, passenger information, special instructions, fares and return times.

Keep Mobile can easily generate many standard management reports using the built-in report generator, as well as required statistical reports for local authorities.

Most importantly, the system has delivered on simplicity and usability. The software has made it easy for Keep Mobile to quickly train new volunteers.

“One volunteer who had never been involved with the day-to-day running operations and who had no training on the software was able to enter a booking after only 45 minutes with the system,” cites Fred Rule, Chairman of Keep Mobile.

The volunteer was able to find the caller in the system, enter the details of the new booking, and assign the trip to a bus.

Looking Forward

With the help of SNT to manage journey bookings and passenger subscriptions, Keep Mobile was able to increase the number of journeys provided without sacrificing quality of service.

“The SNT software has enabled us to develop and expand our services from three buses to ten without any increase in administration staffing levels,” says Mr. Rule.

During implementation (November 1997) and in the years since, Keep Mobile has been able to rely on SNT support staff to be there for assistance and “first-class, friendly customer support”.

All of which goes a long way towards being expandable in the future.