Hello and welcome to the first edition of InTransit eq, our newsletter that will be “e”-mailed to you on a “q”-uarterly basis. This latest initiative is in response to feedback from our clients and prospective clients who would like us to keep in touch more often.

As we’d like you to read InTransit eq from top to bottom each quarter, please provide feedback on what you’d like to read about next quarter as well as any comments on the articles we included this quarter.  If you are not interested in being included in our circulation list, please unsubscribe via the link at the bottom of this email. 

Nicola Williams
Managing Director

Our 2nd Transit User Group meeting was held in Melbourne over two days in February.

Once again it was a great success with many of the delegates reporting that it was an excellent couple of days and very informative. In fact one of the delegates even went as far as to say that the Transit User Group meetings are virtually indispensable to Transit users!

Many of our clients were represented including Arnotts Biscuits, Australia Post, Tip Top Bakeries, Paperlinx, Goodman Fielder – Baking Aust, Toll Priority, Nestle Dairy Products, Toll Specialised Logistics and Toll Solutions.  It was particularly good to see so many interstate clients and have a chance to put faces to names.

The purpose of the meeting is to provide advanced training, to enable our clients to provide input to our development path, to share Transit knowledge and to build closer relationships between our clients and the Transit team.

Once again the “Transit User Experience” session was the most popular, rating almost 9/10 on our feedback forms! Thanks again to Barry Wells from Armaguard, Peter Sluyter from Australia Post and John Bayne from Toll Solutions for their fantastic presentations within this session.

We feel it's very important to create the opportunity for our clients to give an honest assessment about how they use Transit to gain more efficiencies in their business without sacrificing customer service.

Thank you also to all delegates for attending as you provide invaluable feedback that helps to ensure that Transit stays at the forefront of routing and scheduling technology in Australia.

Nicola Williams
Managing Director

As you might expect, the systems with the least customisations are the ones that can be implemented first.

Clients who are familiarising themselves with the system and testing their specific customisations are Arnotts Biscuits, Goodman Fielder – Baking Aust and Tip Top Bakeries (in NSW). For these guys, it is important that their specific needs are met by the system and that the introduction of Odyssey does not interfere with their workflow. The bread manufacturers in particular are making sure Odyssey’s "Rooster" scheduling is up to scratch.

Just starting on the Odyssey path are Lion Nathan, Weston’s Milling and Nestle Dairy Products.  For these guys it is important to get training in the system and understand the variables and reports that will be important to their business.

The Transit Operations group will be busy making sure that these clients and all our other users meet their business needs and enjoy the benefits of the new system in the coming months. Look out for the upgrade process documents in your email in-tray soon!

One of the more common forms of consulting that I conduct at Transit is to provide assistance with the preparation of tender responses.

Generally these exercises are conducted within an extremely short time frame, as I’m sure you know is common with all tenders!

Given the vast amount of data to sift through, and the large number of alternatives to service the contract, utilising Odyssey is not only a significant time saver, but an ideal approach to generate accurate results that facilitates comparisons to determine the most effective and efficient strategy.

It is very rewarding for me when tender submissions that I have assisted with have been successful - such as TNT Logistics' recent successful proposal for a major national distribution contract. Operating on a very tight timeline, TNT Logistics required assistance in modelling this contract to determine resource requirements – vehicles, driver hours and kilometres.

Changing vehicle capacities enabled a comparison between the various results to identify the most effective fleet configuration.

Providing TNT Logistics with a visual of customer locations and delivery routes helped expedite the review process, where TNT Logistics' operational staff validated the results, even to the extent of ensuring that the classification of the customers into metro / country regions as provided in the tender document was consistent with TNT Logistics' network.

The experience and knowledge gained by understanding how the routing and scheduling software operates, including what the potential outputs are, even if performed by Transit Consulting staff, is an excellent opportunity to identify areas for business improvement throughout your business.

Luke Bourchier
Transport Consultant

How long has Transit Computer Systems been supplying routing & scheduling software in Australia?

Transit started life as a transport consulting firm in the early 70’s, founded by Richard Williams.  Moving into the 80’s, music was not the only industry that was about to experience extravagant change! The rights to an English routing and scheduling system were purchased by Transit, after Richard saw great opportunities for improving fleet operations by via optimisation tools.

Since the first mainframe version was sold in 1980, there have been three ground-up re-writes, and the original system has been modified to the extent that it bears very little resemblance to our new system, Odyssey.  Not even the biggest Wham fan could enjoy 80’s music forever!

How important is it to get my geocode right / what is the right accuracy for me?