Black Cabs Inceases Fleet Efficiency

Situation
Black Cabs Combined, trading as Yellow Cabs is one of the largest fleets in Melbourne, Australia. Established in its current form in 1993 the fleet has over 1,500 cars, with a mixture of standard sedans and station wagons, prestige limousine style vehicles and high-occupancy Maxi-Cabs.

Their focus is delivering a superior communication system to taxi operators and bureau customers such as Arrow and Embassy Taxis. Black Cabs are also unique in the way they consider their drivers as customers and the public as consumers as, according to Garry Bradd - Chairman and CEO of Black Cabs Combined "without satisfied drivers you don't get the taxi operator customers and without the public consumers you don't get any operators".

In the early 1980's there were a couple of basic things that made life difficult for Black Cabs. The manual system of dispatch required not only a telephonist but also a dispatcher. Those dispatchers became very high profile and carried a lot of power in the organisation, because without them Black Cabs couldn't get their work out. A few people wielding this type of power was not good for the organisation as a whole, and it became apparent that Black Cabs would have to review the way they dispatched jobs.

Black Cabs have always been interested in the latest technology. They were instrumental in many of the features of the current Raywood solution. They are an organization who, according to Mr Bradd, "doesn't mind a bit of development" and are willing to fully embrace new technology.

Solution
The Raywood system that many taxi companies are running now was virtually developed at Black Cabs. Most of the large metropolitan fleets around the world will be on something similar to the plotting GPS system that Black Cabs runs.

"Raywood were keen to develop outside the boxes and they were excited about the development. Plus they were flexible enough to meet our requirements and our wish list" said Mr Bradd.

The initial solution, back in 1988 was just a simple bid system. This "bid box" was a simple way of identifying the vehicle which was communicating with the dispatch people. Once this system went in, Black Cabs could more easily identify the taxis and it gave them a degree of control over the fleet.

As the company grew job dispatch and overall fleet efficiency became the reason for embracing new technology.

With the previous bid system, when an operator would call a job, it was quite possible that 25 cars would respond. This created tremendous interference and the operator would have to call and call to get a car, and then adjudicate between cars to dispatch a job. "This could go on for 35 seconds just to dispatch a single job, where we can now dispatch a job in 1 second. So, [job dispatch] efficiency was a big improvement with the computerised dispatch solution" said Mr Bradd.

Black Cabs had worked with Raywood before, so the commissioning of a computerised, dispatch solution in 1991, and the addition of GPS, in 1998 was more a progression with Raywood, rather than brand new systems.

Raywood's sophisticated dispatch solution uses GPS satellites to track the location of vehicles and locate the closest vehicle to the customer, and complex algorithms to dispatch jobs efficiently over a private radio network. This innovative solution increases call centre efficiency, driver income, customer satisfaction and ultimately increases income for the company.

Raywood offers a variety of dispatch methods, including simple plotting systems, a combination of plotting and GPS dispatch and full GPS.

Black Cabs have deployed a solution that allows drivers to plot their location during the quiet times and one that automatically switches over to GPS dispatch in the busy periods. In busy periods, the system selects the appropriate taxi for the job using GPS co-ordinates to determine the closest available car to the customer. Other conditions can also be taken into account, including the amount of time that the car has been vacant, and the conditions required by the customer for example, a station wagon or prestige vehicle. In quiet times, the Raywood solution can give priority to drivers who are plotted in a particular area and have been vacant for the most amount of time. This solution finds a balance between fairness to drivers in quiet periods of the day and true optimization of the fleet during the busy periods.

"From the driver's point of view, they see the plotting system as a benefit. They feel more comfortable and in control with plotting in the quiet times" said Mr Bradd. "Taxi drivers are notorious, it could be raining customers and they'd still complain. But the majority of the guys don't have a problem with the system" continued Mr Bradd

Outcome
"No doubt, fleet efficiency was gained" said Mr Bradd. The Raywood solution created efficiency and saved them from having to put additional taxis on the road. "If we had been operating on the old system, instead of having 3,200 cabs in Melbourne, [the government] may have had to increase it to 4,500 cabs all competing for the same amount of pie" said Mr Bradd. This would not be good for the company or the drivers.

The long term drivers would remember the days, where they would get a job going from the south of Melbourne to the city, and would then have to turn around and drive all the way back to get another job. "Once we were able to show [the drivers] the whole of Melbourne, they started to see areas where they didn't know there was work there" said Mr Bradd. "They might have never gone to [a particular suburb] and now they've started to get jobs there, know the area, hand out cards and suddenly work develops in that area. The system does open the city up so you're not restricted as much to certain areas" continued Mr Bradd.

Early on, there were a few redundancies in the call centre. But, overall the staff adapted and thrived. "Once they saw the power they got back, such as searching for bookings, they were pretty OK" said Mr Bradd.

The Raywood system first and then the telephone technology certainly helped to reduce call centre costs. "On average there are about 16 people in the call centre. Prior to the Raywood system, we would have on average another six" said Mr Bradd. Black Cabs now employs one hundred call-centre staff.

For the end customer, most are pretty impressed with the level of technology Black Cabs has in their cabs. "One of the big things, when we first went with Raywood was that customers were astounded with the speed of the service and delivery" said Mr Bradd. "Since then, the main thing they would've noticed would be the integration of telephone technology, like customer line identification (CLI) through to the Raywood system. That gave them a big buzz" said Mr Bradd

For more information
For more information about Raywood computerised GPS job dispatch solutions visit www.raywoodcomms.com.au. For more information on Black Cabs Combined visit www.blackcabs.com.au or to book a taxi, call 13 CABS or 132 227.

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