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DATE Vil ['EST 1
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Robin Meczes reviews some computer software that is designed tc make a busy transport manager's life that bit simpler.
Vchicle tests,safety inspections, tachograph checks, motor insurance — when you're a transport manager, there's certainly no shortage of things to remember. Traditionally, many hauliers have relied on wall planners to keep track of due dates for all of them but any paper-based method is prone to error and it could only take one mistake to put you on the wrong side of a public inquiry.
Alert! Transport M airager, a new piece of software fromTurners (UK), aims to help prevent these mistakes by keeping track of all the legal requirements related to running HOVs and reminding you on a daily basis as each obligation crops up.
Launched in spring last year. the software holds information at vehicle, trailer, driver and company level.The list of items it tracks is quite long and includes annual tests. safety inspections, tyre inspections, tacho inspections and calibration,trailer inspections. 0-licence renewals, vehicle and excise licences,goodsin-transit, employer's liability, office/buildings and motor insurance, driving licence renewals and licence inspections.
Installing the software was straightforward, taking under a minute and leaving a humble 12Mb imprint on our hard disk.When you subsequently start up your computer Alert! Transport Manager automatically starts up with it to flash up any reminders before your eyes, once you've entered all the necessary data.
Entering the data is straightforward as the software asks for only basic inputs (vehicle registration and type, name and licences held for drivers and some general company information) plus the last dates on which various checks or renewals were carried out. In some instances, additional information of various sorts can be added. With drivers, for example, you can enter a series of one-line notes.
Once all the information is plugged in, the software can get around to the real work of tracking due dates and providing you with prompts. Depending on the type of reminder, the software will flag up three alerts at vaqing intervals in advance of an event date, progressively colour-coded throug green, yellow and red as the urgency rim with a fourth, purple, reminder when LID date is imminent.
The intervals at which these reminden come up are fixed by the software. For a vehicle test, for example.reminders shou come up 14 days, nine days and four days before the due date: with different types insurance, on the other hand, reminders for six, four and two weeks in advance.
Dismissing reminders When reminders pop up you can'dismis; them one by one, which makes each one disappear from the screen and only rettn the next scheduled time, assuming the e% it's reminding you about hasn't yet been actioned. If it has been actioned, on thee hand, the software will intelligently alter records and amend the next due date act ingly — a nice touch Sensibly, these aetivi are also password-controlled so your dri can't simply wander in when you're awa: amend things for you. Adding, removing or editing the records is all nice and easy — a particularly nice touch is that when you remove a record the software will actually hide it. rather than really deleting it, for two years: just in case you end up needing it again — and there are a number of built-in utilities that help you compress and compact your data from time to time to ensure maximum system performance, backup or restore data to and from floppy disk, change some of the codes used in the system or amend the passwords.
From past to future The software also includes a basic 'reports' facility to give you an overview of past and future event dates, whether by vehicles. trailers, drivers or company —or lumped together if you're brave enough to face all your obligations in one go.
In theory. then. this is a useful hit of software aimed squarely at keeping transport managers on the right side of the law. The problem is that our copy. at least, didn't quite work as it should.To be more specific, though the software would produce 'green' alerts for incidents at the first appointed date, our version wouldn't progress through yellow, red and purple alerts,stubbornly maintaining the reen first warning even after the final due lates had passe d.Turners (UK) was unable o explain why this might be.
Another issue was that we were unable to lismiss these warnings so they didn't reappear ntil the next scheduled reminder.The net esult was that every time we started the software we got every outstanding first reminder oming up each time.
Given the number of things to keep track of, :his soon led to a rather crowded screen and, ;ince each alert has to be dismissed individutIly with the administrator password keyed .n every time, quite a lot of falling around was needed to clear it.We thought this problem might be something to do with our system but interestingly, when we spoke toTurners about it, their own system duplicated the problem.
Since neither of the two users we contacted about their impressions had mentioned this problem —and both confirmed when we went back to them that their versions were working perfectly (see panel) — this is all a bit of a mystery. All we can say is that by the time you read this.Thrners promised us these problems would have been fixed. And. having said this, of course the software did at least keep reminding us about due events until we told it they had been carried out.
Still on the reservation
Unfortunately, however, we did have a few other reservations about Alert! Transport Manager. For example, a big button on the main screen marked 'Manual' didn't bring up the, er, manual as it couldn't find the version of Adobe Acrobat Reader we had on our machine (it was set up to access an earlier version with a slightly different configuration). We could still access it from outside Alert! Transport Manager but it was disappointing. We also noticed t hat, while the main screen told us we were using version 1.2.10.another screen told us it was 1.2.9 — tricky if you're ringing technical support and they want to know which version you have. And the graphics were distinctly dultoo.
Apart from all this, we had mixed feelings about the cost of this product. At £25 a month (000 per year), this is a relatively expensive package for the functionality it actually delivers.There are other software offerings out there that will provide all sorts of other fleet management options in addition to task scheduling for anything from £99 to £500 and we couldn't help but feel given the size and scope of this program, that a one-off charge of somewhere under £200 would be more appro priate.This is particularly true given that Al Transport Manager doesn't really offer you anything you couldn't get with a bit of effort from either a mainstream organiser prograi like Microsoft Outlook or any palmtop personal digital assistant (PDA) — either of whi would cost you considerably less than 000 year and,unlike this software, would also at you to determine exactly when you wanted the reminders and how many you wanted.
True,Alert! Transport Manager does offe a degree of automated maintenance of due dates that you'd have to perform manually some other software or a PDA,but how hat would it really be to turn a date in 2003 into the same date in 2004 once the task in quest was corn pleted, with a couple of reminders a couple of weeks in advance?
In the final analysis. we suspect that this software will appeal to those operators wht don't already have any knowledge of mainstm alternatives like Out/oo and who don't have the time or inclination to fin out about them.
If saving the time anc trouble is worth £300 a year to you, then Alert! Transport Manager cot be a useful tool. But we not sure we'd want to spend £1,500 over a fiv( year period on somethi that delivers less functionality than allernati you could buy outright under1.500. •