Recently I have been writing about how I first started
working in the private hire industry. Following on from that once I decided to
make a go of it, I then started looked for a niche. With both DrivenByQ and
Bluestone Cars, a crucial part of the business model was to introduce online
booking. Today it is the norm but back then it was quite revolutionary. One
thing to note here is that smart phones were new and only sold in small
numbers, broadband didn’t really exist and computers were quite expensive. In
2003 the Internet was still in its infancy with most people using a 36k dial-up
modem.
At the time, most companies were using fax to book their
executive travel but this wasn’t great. First off, a fax could drop on the
floor and be trampled. It could be mixed with other faxes and be lost or it
could even get wet. If the information had been received intact, it still had to
be transferred to a diary. This in itself introduced issues. Taking the
experience of my engineering background and looking at the situation, I drew on
a project I completed for my apprenticeship in the 1990s. This considered
CAD/CAM and computer integrated manufacturing techniques.
As computer aided design (CAD) started to become popular so
too did CNC machining. This allowed a skilled tradesman to program a precision
tool path which cut a shape out of a piece of metal. The toolpath was
determined from the CAD drawing. At some stage, someone realised the CNC
programmer was simply copying the information on the CAD drawing but with the
opportunity to introduce errors. The solution was to electronically feed the
CAD data to the CNC machine with no manual transposing of data. This eliminated
errors, reduced the time, simplified the process and decreased paper waste.
For me, creating a fax, feeding it through a machine and
then reversing the process to create a diary entry was exactly the same as
printing off a drawing and manually programming a machine from it – old fashioned
and prone to ‘transposing’ errors. To add to this, in the early days I would
receive numerous phone calls on a Friday afternoon from companies who wanted to
check and confirm their bookings for the following week. With my lean hat on, I
realised this was not ‘value add’. After all, what a customer really pays for
is a vehicles wheels to turn, not for us to do admin. What they really required
was access to share my diary.
Again, going back to my engineering background I had read
multiple books about Toyota. One principle they have is that projects should be
managed using a sheet of A3 paper and posted on a wall. This keeps the data simple
and available to all users. It also ensures no matter how many times the data
is updated, it is always the ‘current’ version which is shared. For me, this
was a great principle to adopt and combine with the CAD/CAM integration. Quite
simply, if a customer used an online booking form, they had created the data –
all we had to do was share between users.
By introducing a database driven website, it gave the
opportunity to collect data accurately from a customer through an online
booking form. The data was automatically added to a diary system where it could
be manipulated by an admin user (or manager). This process eliminated the need
to transpose data and the need for paper. By using a smartphone the manager
could be anywhere thus eliminating the need for bricks and mortar too. Not only
did we do a great job with data by speeding up the process and reducing errors,
we cut the cost of overheads too. Essentially a booking could now be received
and processed within 30 seconds.
Another benefit of the online booking system was that
customers could access it. Now they could view their bookings without needing
to call. They could also access the system and make changes or just look at who
the driver was. The final benefit to working this way was when it came to
invoicing. No longer did we need to separate customers and drivers manually and
create separate documents. This was now done through the database reporting
tools where an invoice took just three seconds to produce and then it could be
sent electronically further reducing costs. My Dad always said my head was in
the clouds – these days, so is my business too.
