Customer Case Study

Customer:

Metroline

Industry:

Transportation

Challenge:

A mobile application, for handheld devices, that would allow road supervisors to share and receive real-time information on bus movements, traffic and accidents

Solution:

Nokia Intellisync Mobile Suite, including Nokia Intellisync Device Management and Nokia Intellisync Application Sync

Benefits:

Access to timely information improves decision making process; enhanced on-time record maximises potential for contractual bonuses

Anyone who has set foot on a bus in London has probably travelled with Metroline.  As one of London’s leading bus companies, Metroline runs 13.5 percent of public buses in the city through its contract with Transport for London; operating a fleet of more than 1,200 buses on 96 routes, employing approximately 3,500 drivers, and carrying 250 million passengers per year.  A wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore-based ComfortDelgro Corporation – the world’s second-largest listed land transport company – Metroline aspires to be the best bus service provider in London.

The Challenge

With 1,200 buses traversing the congested streets of London on a daily basis, Metroline’s greatest challenge is keeping to its tight schedule. To ensure that the city’s buses run on time, Transport for London authorities enforce heavy payment penalties for arrivals that fall outside of a specific time threshold and offer an attractive bonus scheme when schedules are met. This financial incentive means companies such as Metroline are determined to keep their buses rolling like clockwork.

“With thousands of our buses moving about the city each day, it is imperative that we control each schedule down to the minute,” explained Scott Packman, Service Centre Support Manager for Metroline. “Metroline deploys 100 road supervisors, who are each out on the streets eight hours a day, to assist bus drivers and keep everyone on schedule, as well as to report traffic delays, accidents and mechanical problems. Part of a supervisor’s job was to maintain a paper record of every arrival and departure.  This log would then be sent back to the main office every week, where it would be evaluated in detail to determine how the company was performing.  As you can imagine, this was a very labour-intensive process.”

Packman added that finding an electronic means of capturing data in the field and providing routing information to road supervisors in real time had become essential. To address the problem, Metroline carried out a comprehensive search for a technology provider that would be capable of translating the business processes and reporting that Metroline required into a reliable and resilient solution, usable by non-technical, field-based staff. Ecommnet was chosen, along with Nokia, to provide this mobile application and platform solution written specifically to Metroline’s requirements.

The Solution

Deploying its extensive engineering background and expertise in mobility, Ecommnet developed a mobile solution for Metroline that allows the company to electronically measure and audit the performance of its fleet, giving confidence that its contractual commitments to Transport for London are met.  As a long- standing Expert Channel Partner in the Nokia for Business Channel Program, Ecommnet utilised Nokia Intellisync Device Management and Nokia Intellisync Application Sync to develop an application that enables road supervisors to enter arrival, departure, traffic, accident and mechanical issues data into handheld devices.

Ecommnet relied on Nokia Intellisync Application Sync to synchronize its business application, enabling a bi-directional data push to and from the mobile devices to Metroline’s database.  Schedule information can then be calculated in real time, providing an assessment of how close each bus is to optimum on-time performance.  That information is then pushed back out to supervisors in the field.

“With so many buses operating on such tight schedules, having one bus fall behind can quickly have a domino effect on the rest of the system,” said Robert Campbell, Managing Director, Ecommnet.  “Using our custom application and Nokia’s powerful solution, Metroline can quickly identify the problem, and give supervisors the information they need to take immediate corrective action.  In essence, this allows the supervisors to work smarter, rather than harder.”

In addition to improving the decision making process, mobile technology is allowing supervisors to report traffic accidents and road closures in real time.  Such incidents must be reported to Transport for London within 30 minutes of their occurrence in order to avoid penalties for performance delays.  Once a supervisor enters this type of information into his or her handheld device, the Ecommnet application, using Nokia Intellisync Application Sync, pushes the data back to headquarters where it is automatically routed to Transport for London.

To manage the mobile application on Metroline’s handheld devices, Ecommnet implemented Nokia Intellisync Device Management.  The Nokia solution is highly flexible and scalable and provides critical functionality such as remote device configuration, application management, theft-loss protection and data recovery.

The Benefits

We estimate this is saving us approximately 40 man-days a month
“During February, our road supervisors created 6,000 Bus Running Records (BRRs) using the new mobile application,” said Naresh Patel, Head of IT for Metroline.  “These BRRs log each bus’s movements and the actions taken by the supervisors.  In the past, it would have taken five managers and their senior staff a week to pour through all the paper records to determine any anomalies and schedule problems in order to build a database of information.  With the solution provided by Ecommnet and Nokia, we can integrate our BRRs in literally ten minutes.  We estimate this is saving us approximately 40 man-days a month.”

Metroline can now monitor all of its routes in real time and, using only 100 mobile devices, can effectively control its entire 1,200 bus fleet.  As one of London’s top bus operators, Metroline already had an exceptional on-time record.  But according to Patel, the Ecommnet/Nokia solution has allowed Metroline to gather better quality information and to do so more quickly, which has improved decision making.  Ultimately, this has resulted in performance improvements that maximise the potential for contractual bonuses.

“From an application point of view, what Ecommnet has built for us using Nokia Intellisync Mobile Suite, has proved to be simple to use and reliable,” concluded Packman.  “The two companies delivered a solution that meets our objectives, and we couldn’t be more pleased with the results.”

Customer Profile

• Company: Metroline Travel
• Headquarters: Harrow, Middlesex, England
• Founded: 1989
• URL: www.metroline.co.uk
• Primary Business: Transportation