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Case Studies
Case 1
Andrew’s Airport Parking - Parking Management System
The Business
As the name suggests, Andrew’s Airport Parking (AAP) provide short and long term parking for people travelling via air, with sites located just a few short minutes from both Melbourne and Brisbane airports. Andrew’s attribute their success to "Good Old Fashioned Service".
As part of the business the following services are provided:
- Outdoor and Undercover parking
- Courtesy shuttles to and from the airport
- Full car cleaning and/or detailing
- Car servicing and repairs
- 24 hour security
The Problem
Since opening with 2 staff in 1997, AAP have grown substantially, today having capacity in Melbourne for around 1500 cars and employing more than 60 staff. Such a business requires a lot of administrative and service coordination.
When customers return from trips, their cars must be in a location ready to be picked up, and if cleaning and servicing have been requested, those services must have been completed before customer arrival. In the case of cleaning, this needs to be coordinated to occur within a short time before the customer’s arrival to ensure the car is still clean at pickup.
Customer details need to be on file, departure and arrival times easily available, referrals from partner organizations need to be tracked and commissions calculated monthly. A variable fee structure and membership based on frequency of parking is also maintained. Customer checkin and checkout must be fast and efficient due to the large number of transactions, ensuring customers make their flight deadlines.
While AAP had a custom computer system in operation, it suffered from numerous issues including crashing at critical times, doubling up on data entry bookings and other numerous problems which were affecting the efficiency of the business. There were also a list of improvements planned to take the automation even further, including email confirmations and online bookings.
The Solution
AAP had a very clear understanding of their business processes which had made them successful over a long period. The challenge was to develop an application which supported and empowered those processes, and most importantly, it had to prompt, direct and remind staff of required actions, which is important when a large percentage of staff are casual.
The result was a database solution which is now central to all operations of the AAP business. Functionality includes:
Bookings Management
- Reservations and bookings are easily entered into the system. On any day, the system lists bookings in order of their expected arrival/departure.
- Online bookings go straight into the system via the AAP web site
- Customers are emailed confirmations of their bookings automatically.
- Car locations are kept up to date by yard staff. Hours before customer return, yard staff are prompted to move cars to appropriate ready locations.
- Staff are prompted when to wash, detail or service cars.
- Member details are recorded and different memberships managed. Performance based member rates are recalculated nightly.
- Referral partner details are recorded and referred bookings tracked with commissions calculated and paid monthly.
- Referral partners have online access for entry of bookings and tracking their own booking/performance history.
- Corporate customer accounts are managed and invoiced at the end of each month.
- Internal management facility for following up incidents and/or customer complaints.
Reporting
- Various internal key performance indicator reports.
- Referral summaries including regional mapping of customer distribution.
Conclusion
The solution developed by ALADN has not only solved the problems of the previous system, but completed the vision AAP had for an application which truly supports the decision making processes and automates many of the finance, management, procedural, quality, service and communication tasks.
Customer Comment
"We have been dealing with ALADN System solutions for over 2 years and have found their service and expertise to be excellent. The team at ALADN conduct themselves with honesty and integrity and have a depth of knowledge and experience that has produced a tailor made solution for the operation of our business, that is second to none. This system (APMS) operates all aspects of our day to day operations and was vastly complex to build. Andrew’s Airport Parking is considered the market leader in our industry. Paramount to our ongoing success in innovation has been our ability to embrace new technology and apply it in applications that further enhance the efficiency of the operation of our business. ALADN with a keen understanding of our requirements has played a large part in our innovation advancements. More recently ALADN have assisted with the upgrade of our web site where they have provided a solution that allows customer bookings that are made via our web site to be channeled directly into the APMS system, providing further savings and efficiency. ALADN also manage our requirements ongoing and are a pleasure to deal with and are always responsive to our needs especially during priority situations."
Andrew Shanahan
Managing Director
Andrew’s Airport Parking
Case 2
Safety Wise Solutions - Training Management Software
The Business
Safety Wise Solutions are a worldwide HSE (Health Safety Environment) consultancy & training provider based in Australia. Coordinating training courses around the world requires a high degree of administration and coordination. As well as organizing the courses themselves:
- Materials must be ordered and delivered.
- Consultants and trainers travel & accommodation requirements must be booked.
- Travel expenses and consultant invoices must be paid.
- Attendee certificates need to be printed and distributed, and
- Course feedback needs to be recorded appropriately.
All this is managed by a small support team of only 2 people.
The Problem
Safety Wise came to ALADN with the problem many businesses wish they had. They were growing quickly. The number of courses they were coordinating worldwide was increasing rapidly and the administration and coordination of all of the associated tasks was becoming hard to manage with the small support team. As courses were normally booked months in advance, keeping track of when tasks needed to be triggered and tracking the status of activities by 3rd party suppliers was also a major challenge. Simply hiring more people was not the solution. They hoped that a custom built business management application could solve the challenges they were facing.
The Solution
Safety Wise had a clear understanding of their business processes. All that was remaining was for ALADN to perform the business analysis and along with key personnel from Safety Wise Solutions, design an appropriate solution.
The result was a custom web based application called e-Bev. E-Bev today provides a complete management and communication system which is both powerful and easy to use. After seeing what was possible, Safety Wise Solutions, in conjunction with ALADN’s consultants, continue to add new powerful modules to e-Bev to further improve the automation and efficiency, or more importantly, the service they provide to their customers and course attendees.
An important requirement in the development of e-Bev was to provide the consultants and trainers with their own access to the system. This was designed to allow them to look up company/contact information, view details of courses for which they are running and enter their own travel requests, preferences and expenses. At the completion of a course, they also add the course participants based on attendance sheets. All this can be done from anywhere in the world via the web.
Functionality delivered by e-Bev includes:
The result was a database solution which is now central to all operations of the AAP business. Functionality includes:
Course Management
- Full client database, including company and contact details.
- Entry of all project/task details including courses, consulting, material sales, incident investigations etc.
- Ability to allocate a consultant to a task.
Upon allocating a consultant, the consultant receives an email confirming their allocation. They can then log into the system and confirm their availability.
- Material management.
When a course is booked, the system automatically adds material requirements and sends an order to the listed material supplier. The supplier can then log into e-Bev and mark materials when they are dispatched and/or delivered.
- Support staff or the consultants themselves can enter travel requirements into e-Bev. Those travel requirements are then checked by support staff and an order is sent from e-Bev, to the travel agent for booking.
- Consultants add the attendees at the completion of the course. This triggers support staff to generate certificates and dispatch them to the attendees.
- Consultants add their expenses, including invoices to the e-Bev system. Support staff are notified by e-Bev of the entry of the expenses, which can then be paid on approval.
- Course attendee feedback is collected and added to each course. Comments requiring follow up are flagged for attention and/or periodical review dates set.
- The system has an alert facility. It alerts the support staff when ...
- Consultants have not confirmed.
- Materials have not been ordered, dispatched or delivered within a set number of days before the course start date.
- Travel has not been booked within a set number of days before the course start date.
- Attendees have not been loaded.
- Expenses have not been reimbursed.
- Booking forms have not been sent.
- Internal management facility for following up incidents and/or customer complaints.
Enhancements
After the initial implementation, Safety Wise decided to add the ability for attendees to perform a multiple choice test to achieve a Certificate of Attainment. They discussed it with ALADN and the result was a new module which provided the ability to create multiple choice assessments within e-Bev, linked to specific courses. Now, as soon as a certificate of attendance is generated for an attendee, an email is sent to the attendee with a link which takes them to an online multiple choice questionnaire. Successful completion of this online questionnaire triggers an automated generation of a certificate of attainment, which the support staff forward to the attendee.
Conclusion
The solution developed by ALADN has allowed Safety Wise solutions to take full control of the growing administrative and coordination requirements of a growing business without the need to add any new support staff. As a registered training company, audits are performed regularly by appropriate regulatory bodies. The most recent of these resulted in a quick all clear and an acknowledgment that their electronic record keeping was one of the best they had seen in the industry.
Customer Comment
"As a worldwide HSE consultancy & training provider based in Australia, real time administrative coordination is paramount. The deployment of consultants and trainers; booking their travel requirements and ensuring the timely delivery of training material to training venues locally and in some of the remotest parts of the world requires a robust and sophisticated management system. Our business requires our consultants to be able to input their expenses and invoices 24/7 from around the globe even when the office is closed. As a training provider we need to record details of our course attendees, distribute certificates and provide our clients with flexible solutions such as on-line assessments. We sought an automated solution to minimize our administration workload with the minimum of support staff. We designed and developed a unique solution customized to our business needs in partnership with ALADN. ALADN understood our business and our needs, developed an elegant, user friendly solution and continue to manage and develop our e-Bev Business Management System to ensure the system grows with our business. The implementation of e-Bev has transformed the day to day operation of our business and allowed us to focus on the truly value adding activities of meeting our clients needs."
Gerry Gibb
Managing Director
Safety Wise Solutions
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