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TECHNOLOGY
ROUTEING SOFTWARE
New programmes to relieve Olympic stress
A number of software firms have developed programmes to help operators beat the disruption caused by the Olympics
Words: Toby Clark With all eyes on the Olympics this summer, operators working in and around London need to be prepared for all the disruption the Games will cause.
Transport for London (TfL) is imposing a series of temporary trafic and parking restrictions while the Olympics and Paralympics take place between 27 July and 9 September. The restrictions will vary according to which events are taking place, and where.
A number of routeing and scheduling irms are providing practical route information and hands-on help – and some are saying that TfL has been less helpful than it could have been. The publicly available data on the Olympic trafic controls is comprehensive, but has only been published in the form of spreadsheet lists of roads and postcodes, or as printable PDF format maps. The maps are comprehensive but complex (see page opposite), and the information is not available in the Geographical Information System (GIS) format that routeing and navigation systems require. Therefore, irms have had to produce their own data in a usable form.
Mary Short, MD of routeing and mapping irm MapMechanics, says: “We have taken Navteq’s mapping and added the information ourselves. We are licensing it to companies for use with any software system.” Short has spoken to companies in previous Olympic cities, including Sydney-based foodservice irm Goodman Fielder, and says their experience suggests overall trafic levels might actually go down. However, she reckons there will still be local delivery issues. “Some companies may be wanting to renegotiate delivery windows. However, some operators are doing map-based analysis of their customers to classify and grade them. This means that the trafic ofice has factual information about customers, so that they can make on-the-ly decisions on the day.”
Using all information available
Paragon talked to Sainsburys, DHL, Asda and others to ind out what they were planning, and its customers have been supplied with a free Olympic Planning Pack, with special map edits, ilters and congestion proiles. “We’ve had a huge uptake,” says MD William Salter. “The information we’ve used has been based on the TfL website. We’ve used the timetable to develop congestion models in different places.We’ve done a lot of work on it – it wasn’t something our customers could have done themselves.” Paragon has also organised a webinar for its customers, and made sure its telephone support staff are up to speed.
Tim Pigden, MD of Optrak, says: “The thing that our customers are concerned with is the identiication issue: which of our customers is on the Olympic Route Network? Helping with that is deinitely a major task for us. “TfL has sent out lists of postcodes [for the areas affected by parking restrictions], but there are plenty of people who are just one street away from these postcodes who will still be affected.” Optrak has been running free seminars for its customers on dealing with the Olympics, to enable them to simulate more congested streets and run models for alternative night-time deliveries. Pigden says it is vital operators know how to generate alternative schedules for themselves: between now and July, some of them might have acquired new customers and have a completely different routine.
Navevo is a navigation software company, which has been operating since 2004. It has worked with hardware irms such as Binatone, and produces its own LGV-speciic sat-nav unit called ProNav. In 2010 Navevo joined a project called Informed, a consortium with TfL and PIE (a mapping-based data consultancy) which is collecting and integrating road data from local authorities – sometimes easier said than done. “Some authorities still have Trafic Regulation Orders [TROs] in paper form,” says Navevo CEO Nick Caesari. Navevo has exclusive access to the Informed consortium’s data, and ProNav already includes full information on the London Lorry Control Scheme’s Excluded Road Network (ERN).
The consortium has also produced TfL’s Olympic Freight Journey Planner tool. “The Olympics are going to be challenging,” says CEO
Nick Caesari. “Drivers have to deal with that in real-time, and the best way is via sat-nav. By the Olympics we will have full information on the Olympic and Paralympic Route Network, and SMEs will be able to download routes from the TfL journey planner to the ProNav.” ■
Further information
TfL map of the Olympic Route Network: www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/ corporate/london-2012-olympic-route-network.pdf Overview of the Olympic and Paralympic Route Networks: http://www.london2012.com/orn/where-will-the-orn-and-prn-operate.php TfL Olympic traffic planning tool: www.tfl.gov.uk/gettingaround/ london2012/21806.aspx#2
HOME DELIVERY SOFTWARE
The UK e-retail market – goods and services sold via the internet – grew 16% in 2011 to more than £68bn, and is forecast to grow a further 13% in 2012. A recent survey of 2,000 internet shoppers found that, on average, they each spend more than £3,000 a year on goods and services bought online – most of it on supermarket deliveries and intangibles such as travel bookings, but there is still a growing demand for home and business parcels deliveries, so delivery operations will have to become more competitive.
The same survey, the IMRG UK Consumer Home Delivery Review 2012, reported that “the main concern for consumers is clearly service-related and centred on the frustration of a delivery arriving that cannot be left when no one is there to accept it”.
Large operations such as Amazon, and particularly retailers with complex two-man delivery services, have long had delivery management systems (DMS) to control the process and communicate progress: customers can choose a delivery slot at the point of sale, or be offered a delivery date, with the exact slot to be confirmed later. They can also track deliveries via a PC or smartphone.
DMS systems from suppliers such as Axida and Amethyst Systems are becoming more accessible to smaller firms without a sophisticated IT setup, because they can be accessed via a broadband link either to a cloud computing service or a dedicated, hosted server. Axida’s HDi software is about to start running on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and go live with its first SME customer. “We have made HDi accessible to a much broader range of companies as they won’t need to make large upfront investments to use it,” says Axida director Wayne Holgate. Amethyst Systems also offers a fully hosted DMS service, while other firms are providing fully hosted pay-as-you-go systems: NetDespatch has a ‘front end’ for courier firms, the bizarrely-named The PODfather has a mobile Proof of Delivery system, and MetaPack provides a link from online retailers to delivery firms.