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| Hello
and welcome to the ninth edition of InTransit eq, the newsletter that is “ e ”-mailed to you on a “ q ”-uarterly basis. We try to include articles that appeal to our clients and/or our prospects and other friends in the industry. If there is something you'd like to read in future editions please provide feedback. Of course if you are not interested in being included in our circulation list, please unsubscribe where indicated right at the bottom of this email.
Nicola Williams
Managing Director
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| Transit User Group Meeting 5–6 April 2005 |
Our 4th annual UGM is now less than a month away. Although our clients will be sent a personal invitation, we’d like to take this opportunity to invite our prospective clients and other associates to join us on the first day. It would be a great opportunity to meet our current clients, see a sneak preview of Transit Odyssey 2.0 and learn more about our scheduling software.
Our past UGMs have been a great success, and we hope this year will be no different! Included in the program will be the popular “Transit user experience” and “Advanced functionality” sessions. In response to requests, new to the agenda this year will be small group sessions designed to give our users the opportunity to share experiences and pick up best practice tips from each other. |
We will also be facilitating a group discussion on “What’s next for transport software?”, which will include brief presentations from a couple of our Alliance Partners. As is now the tradition, our “Development priorities” session will continue. This session is a fantastic opportunity for our users to provide feedback that will have a major impact on our development priorities for the coming year.
To see the full agenda please click here. If you would like to come, please email either of us before March 25.
We look forward to seeing you in April!
Samantha Ousley & Thuy Nguyen
Client Support Team
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| Sharing the Risks and Rewards |
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We know that Odyssey significantly reduces transport costs, our clients know that Odyssey significantly reduces transport costs, the modelling we do as part of the pre-sales process shows that Odyssey significantly reduces transport costs - and yet, there is still a barrier to the uptake of optimised scheduling software for new clients, even when the return on investment is well within one year!
Our research has shown that this barrier is at least partly due to previous bad experiences with software implementations where the system simply didn’t deliver the desired results. Therefore, what we now offer is a shared risk/shared reward arrangement. If the use of Odyssey doesn’t produce adequate savings to your bottom line when used in operation, then the fee to you is minimal; however, if it does then we ask to share the benefits. |
This arrangement is applicable for a once-off reorganisation of your routes or territories, and for the ongoing daily use of Odyssey. Even if your operation only has 5-10 vehicles, we can work together to save you money. We would do the bulk of the pre-implementation work ourselves and require little input from you and your operational staff. We would also invoice our share of the benefits on a monthly basis and so CapEx approval is not required.
We’ll share the risk of pursuing the possibility of using our system or our services in your operation, if you’ll share the benefits. It can’t get much fairer than that!
If this sounds like something you’d like to explore, I look forward to hearing from you.
Nicola Williams
Managing Director
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| Development Update |
Many of our clients have expressed a desire to know more about our ongoing development. They asked that they be updated more regularly on new functionality, bug fixes and scheduling engine changes. During the last year our development team has focussed on completing two major tasks: the release of Odyssey 2.0 and the use of Sensis’ StreetNet Routable data as the basis for our updated Geographical Information System. This data is used widely for in-car navigation and is the most detailed commercially available Australian road network. We are, therefore, looking forward to being able to provide our clients with the most accurate time and distance information we possibly can.. |
Odyssey 2.0, which will make its debut shortly at the UGM, is shaping up as a very exciting release, with new address cleaning tools, improved problem reporting and geographical analysis tools being just some of the highlights. System speed has also been dramatically increased for all of our very large schedule users.
There have been constant improvements made to the scheduling engine, with the most recent release, 15.1, attaining the highest ever quality scores in benchmarking. In line with development priorities voted at the last UGM, a major new feature gives users the ability to define an order to have multiple collection points and a single delivery point.
Detailed information about these changes will be made available at the 2005 UGM.
Scott Dowell
Senior Account Manager
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| Odyssey Handy Hints - Comprehensive Export |
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If you have your Odyssey system working exactly how you want it, then it’s time for a comprehensive export! Comprehensive export (either Access or Excel format) is a new Odyssey feature that will export all your dataset information: Customers, Orders, Vehicles, Parameters, Depots… even Schedules. By making a comprehensive export you have a snapshot of all your data at a point in time. |
The process is simple. In the dataset you want to save, from the Odyssey Explorer menu choose Action > Export. In the File path box select the folder where you want to save the file and type the file name. Then choose “Comprehensive set for [Access/Excel]” as your Template.
When you want to retrieve the dataset, you simply create a new dataset and do a Comprehensive Import. It is important to remember that if you want to import everything (including the Schedule) you have to set the import options (Action > Import > Options…) to "Delete all existing and append new".
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| FAQ'S |
| What are ancillary fields?
Often users ask the question: “Can I put my own notes/codes into Odyssey?” By this, they are usually referring to driver instructions or internal warehouse numbers that are useful to their staff, but are not required by Odyssey for scheduling.
The answer is: “Yes, in the ancillary fields”. There are several of these fields that can be found in the Customer Editor and Order Editor. They vary in character length and can contain both numbers and text.
The ancillary fields have no impact on the schedule, so they can contain and mean whatever the user wishes. Our Client Support staff can also change the field names so that the screen display is more meaningful to the user.
If you wish to learn more about these fields please contact our Help Desk.
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