Silver Top Grows with Raywood

Situation
The urban sprawl of Melbourne, Australia, covers a bigger metropolitan
area than most other major cities in the world. It is bigger than Greater
London and New York. The population per kilometre is also a lot lower
than other cities, which means potential passengers per kilometre are a
lot thinner on the ground than in places that are more built-up.

Most taxi operators calculate expenses based on the kilometres driven,
fuel, tyres and the overall life expectancy of the vehicle. In Melbourne
taxis were lucky to operate at 50% paid kilometres.

In the early 1980's Silver Top and Raywood saw an opportunity to
address. If you could get a system that would allocate the nearest car to
the passenger it would be more efficient and increase the paid km ratio.
The revenue per km is going to be better, the costs per km will stay
static, but the improvement on the bottom line would be huge.

Solution
Back in the early 1980's Silver Top were one of Raywood's very first
customers for vehicle identification. There were a number of up-grades
and modifications carried out prior to the installation of a Raywood
computer aided dispatch system in 1992. This QNX-based solution had
the capacity to deal with fleets of 1,000+ cars, as opposed to DOSbased
solutions.

QNX's distributed processing architecture means that you increase your
computing power by simply increasing the number of operator terminals.
This solution has been so effective for Silver Top that up until last year,
they still had some of the original 286 MHz terminals. "The concept was
smart enough to be able to use the old machines and it still all worked"
said Mr Franet, Managing Director - Silver Top Taxi Service.

Silver Top's Raywood solution was enhanced with the inclusion of
Global Positioning (GPS) in 1995. "We've grown up with Raywood. Their technology is cutting edge" said Mr Franet. "We had the first GPS
dispatch system, as far as we know, in the world" said Mr Franet.
Silver Top was definitely the first one to use GPS for booking allocation
and the big driver for that was increased efficiency. Silver Top wanted to
ensure that they allocated the nearest car to the booking.
Silver Top also wanted to discourage the drivers using mobile phones
and pager networks from "bottling up" customers and deluding
themselves that they're being efficient. "By the time they'd paid x for
additional communications and then drive all over town, they'd end up
broke", said Mr Franet.

The overall goal was to increase fleet efficiency from 50% paid
kilometres to 60% or higher. That has most certainly been achieved.
"Drivers that work the system exclusively and well can now get up to
70% paid kms. It's a matter of drop and plot until you get the next job"
said Mr Franet.

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 solutions, including simple plotting
systems, a combination of plotting and GPS dispatch and full GPS. In a
full GPS dispatch solution, the system automatically selects the 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. Raywood's full GPS dispatch algorithms find a balance between
fairness to drivers in quiet periods of the day and true optimization of the
fleet during the busy periods.

"The great strength of Raywood is they really grew up with the industry.
They understand how drivers are going to try to subvert the system and
that they will always try and get an advantage. Plus they have an
understanding of the peaks and troughs" said Mr Franet.

"The co-operation between the industry and Raywood is pretty
significant" said Mr Franet.

Outcome
Silver Top's Communications Centre is among the most modern in
Australia. Raywood's computerised dispatch system is interfaced with
the latest Lucent Technologies telephone system, which has been
specifically designed for Silver Top and includes Caller Line
Identification (CLI), and Integrated Voice Response (IVR). This
combination further reduces the time taken to make and process a
booking. CLI identifies the originating phone number and on the second
and subsequent calls (via a customer template created and saved by the
operator), the address and other details attached to that number. The
client can then either follow the voice prompts of the IVR or wait to
speak to an operator.

Previously, experienced voice radio operators would dispatch between
2,000 and 4,000 jobs per day. The current system is capable of
dispatching in excess of 35,000 jobs per day. "[With this system] we
could probably handle double the work we're handling now" said Mr
Franet.

The technology of the system is such that Silver Top accepts and
dispatches bookings for both Bendigo and Sunbury-Gisborne Taxi
companies transparently to the customer, creating additional revenue for
Silver Top.

In the call centre Silver Top have done away with paper and it's a lot
less stressful. However, Silver Top has not cut staff. "We've got the
highest paying call centre and excellent staff retention; in fact our
turnover is nil" said Mr Franet.

"We're now more customer service oriented; we greet the customer by
name when the templates are presented. For example with the Bendigo
bureau, we've added customised notes, so that the call-taker can speak
more personally with the customer. This breeds customer loyalty" said
Mr Franet.

As is typical with taxi drivers you only hear the complaints. "There's
always the rowdy group, that no matter what you do, they still find fault
and try to subvert it. But the silent majority says "it's beaut"" said Mr
Franet.

The fleet has grown substantially over the years however it is difficult to
quantify the growth. "As we've successfully grown the number of
bookings we can allocate by car. The smaller companies have slowly
dwindled and consolidated" said Mr Franet. "When I started in this
industry there were twenty six companies in the Melbourne area, now
there are two large networks and one small one" added Mr Franet.
Raywood's constant commitment to customer support is a key reason
for Silver Top's loyalty. "Response to a break-down or crash has always
been good. Actual downtime is measurable in hours over ten years and
it's nothing like being off the air for three or four hours, it is three minutes here, half an hour there" added Mr Franet.

The Raywood solution at Silver Top is now approaching ten years old,
which is a remarkable achievement. That the sixteen hundred Mobile
Data Terminals (MDT) have survived, in the challenging in-vehicle
environment for that long, is excellent for any sort of electronic
equipment and they're still going.

"We get a constant procession of developers coming through the door
with the latest whiz-bang solution. Most of them think that dispatching a
booking is no more than sending an SMS message. Someone's got to
come up with something that's really magic to turn us away from
Raywood" said Mr Franet.

For more information
For more information about Raywood computerised GPS job dispatch
solutions visit www.raywoodcomms.com.au. For more information on
Silver Top Taxis visit www.silvertop.com.au or to book a taxi, call 131
008.

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