Highlights

• Real-time access for customers, partners, and vendors
• Seamless collaboration and 24/7 availability
• Scalable and reliable Software as a Service (SaaS) platform  
• Integration with Google map APIs to provide real-time updates
• Reduced manual processes with 100% automated route planning, pick-up, and drop intimations

Overview

Travel Mate is a corporate cab and travel desk operator, providing employee pickup and drop, airport transfers, and commute services to employees on behalf of the businesses they represent.  

Client’s requirements

The customer’s principal ask was a means to improve route planning and to be able to provide real-time communication between the different parties, passengers, drivers, business travel desks, and cab operators. All of this had to be automated, to reduce manual overhead.  

The key tenets of Travel Mate’s requirements were:

1. A SaaS application that would onboard drivers, cars, teams of drivers, and fleets

2. Integration with Maps and phone apps to allow calls, messages, real-time status updates, and “SOS” features

3. The capability for Real-time rostering of drivers, billing, and payments  

4. Privacy features to protect the mobile phone numbers of employees

5. Full-fledged Employee, Driver, and Web application with features spanning the entire trip lifecycle  

Travel Mate wanted easy-to-use trip planning, booking, efficient route planning, compliance with local law enforcement, automated route and trip management, and automated real-time billing in a single, scalable, reliable interface.  

Solution

Velocis began by mapping the different business processes, logic, user-system, and system-system interactions that the application was to be designed to perform. Transparency, auditability, automation, and real-time processing were cornerstones of the solution. The application was thus developed to incorporate:  

1. One of the most important outcomes of building the application was that Travel Mate could now bring a standardised digital solution encompassing all of its services, transforming it from a travel to a technology business  

2. Real-time computation of trip cost with automated fuel price updates, to allow instantaneous billing for each trip

3. A simple, unified, intuitive interface that functioned with minimal user inputs

4. Distinct apps for drivers, employees, and admins  

5. Real-time vehicle tracking, automated alerts, and SOS/Panic alert feature for emergencies

6. Call masking feature to protect the phone numbers of employees

7. Maps integration and GPS tracking, combined with alerts and communication features  

8. User Management interface to contain information on all vehicles and drivers

9. A dashboard for Admins to view all live trips, access vehicle breakdowns and panic/SOS alerts in a single-pane-of-glass

10. Mail and SMS alerts to drivers, vendors and employees allowed for effective communication

Business outcomes

The app comprehensively transformed Travel Mate’s operations as it now allowed them to swiftly onboard new drivers, vehicles, vendors, and business accounts. In addition, the automated route planning feature eliminated the extensively manual process followed earlier, reducing the number of person-hours invested per route, and increasing the flexibility and agility of the services provided to customers. Additionally, real-time billing reduced the scope for billing disputes and improved customer satisfaction. Some of the other benefits include:  

1. Improving Travel Mate’s competitiveness in the market, allowing them to bundle the apps with their services

2. Improving the reliability and efficiency of vehicles and drivers with insights derived from trip data

3. Improved security and privacy for employees as the employee’s phone number is masked when drivers or employees call each other

4. Real-time tracking and updates allowed for significant improvement in service quality and customer satisfaction

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