We previously posted about RideInbox – our order consolidation application. In this second post in the series, we’ll cover the challenges of organising pre-booked rides and how RideSchedule is transforming the work of fleet owners and dispatch managers.
We’re focused here on pre-booked, in-destination transport services. Think airport transfers booked by travellers through travel agencies and tour operators. This work is distinctly different from regular taxi dispatching, which is mostly on demand and all about assigning jobs to the closest driver ‘in the moment’. In contrast, an airport transfer provider receives bookings days or weeks in advance. Early visibility of orders is an advantage, but it does bring its own challenges.
For example, if ABC Cars know they have 100 bookings for tomorrow and just 10 drivers, can they fulfil all those rides? What’s the optimal way to organise these jobs? They’ll want to make sure there are as many back-to-back services as possible, minimising dead mileage and avoiding unnecessary downtime. Where should they start?
Computer science and maths fans will be thinking ‘travelling salesman problem’, while maintenance experts will recognise the similarities with field service management. Both are useful paradigms, however, passenger transport brings many constraints and exceptions that dispatchers will need to consider.
Enter RideSchedule, a drag and drop scheduling tool with a planner view that helps dispatchers visualise the calendar of every driver, dynamically updating the planner as each new service is assigned. A complex exercise which once needed white boards and spreadsheets, and took several hours to finish, can now be completed in under half an hour.
Naturally, we are working on adding automation and AI assistance for dispatchers, but we believe visualisation for human adjustment and final approval will remain essential steps in this type of planning process.
We’ll be covering the full pre-booked ride order lifecycle during this week and next, so follow us on LinkedIn to receive other posts in this series, plus our latest news and announcements.
