In advance
For decades, a wide variety of transportation orders were placed by telephone with local providers. Whether ordering a cab or food, courier trips or ridesharing - the contact, for example, to the often cooperative cab center, formed by local cab entrepreneurs, was established by phone call. For the past 10 years, national and global players have been pushing their way into passenger, food and courier transport services: Uber, Lieferando, Flix, BlablaCar - all with centralized IT structures, all profit-driven. By means of new decentralized, federated IT services, local providers of transport services can emancipate themselves from the expanding platform capitalists and establish their own powerful service brands. By using their own IT networks, cab, delivery and other types of transport can switch local customers from centralized to their own decentralized services.
Goal
An IT system with the following features is to be created for the cab industry as an example for many types of transportation:
- Decentralized structure for all fleet sizes, from individual providers to district headquarters with a few dozen vehicles to city headquarters with hundreds or more cabs;
- federated IT structure for self-determined distribution of tours in times of high demand; - joint operation under a nationwide umbrella brand, similar to cooperative structures, e.g. in the retail sector (Edeka, Rewe);
- Open source software without acquisition costs and mandatory monthly fees makes it easy for cab companies to get started;
- Every cab company can use the software to retain its own regular customers;
- parallel operation to the large app centers such as Uber and FreeNow is possible and desirable;
- productive tools such as daily updated navigation based on OSM, revenue recording for accounting, etc. complement the core functionality of tour acquisition and distribution; This system should be designed from the outset in such a way that it can be easily adapted for other types of transportation such as food delivery, courier services, carpooling, community buses and car sharing.
Workflows
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Cab operator A. has lived for years from a mix of tours, which consisted of offers from a cab center, tours from FreeNow, passengers at the airport and main train station as well as occasional run-ups at the cab post or 'wave' on the roadside. She had almost no telephone customers, as her city is too big and the journeys are naturally too long. With the new decentralized switching system, she can bind well-known tour suppliers to her cab business. Specifically, these are a hotel, two restaurants and two doctors' surgeries that regularly order cabs from her for their customers. Thanks to the federal structure of the new brokerage system, she can also fulfill tour requests when her cars are occupied or too far away. To this end, she has built up a small network of colleagues to whom she is particularly happy to refer her customers. And if no one from her network is available close to her location, she places the tour in the overall pool. By the way, the referral is just a click away - easy as pie.
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Dispatcher B. works at a Hamburg cab dispatch center that specializes in two districts. Thanks to clever marketing and high reliability, a number of local doctors' surgeries, some hotels and numerous restaurants, as well as a number of local business people, have been won as customers. The core of the fleet consists of two dozen cabs operated by individual entrepreneurs. The core fleet is supplemented by a similarly large number of other cab drivers who are personally known and appreciated. During core times, the software system's automatic dispatch system is switched off, at which point B. makes a manual effort to ensure that the core fleet is fully utilized and then also arranges for 'busy' rides. Older customers in particular appreciate the fact that this decentralized system also accepts tour orders by telephone. At night, when demand is low, one of the cab drivers takes the few calls, and the automatic switchboard is switched on just as it is at peak times, e.g. Saturday evening or New Year's Eve. The control center is run by a dozen individual entrepreneurs from the core fleet. They are united by the desire to be independent and autonomous by having their own customers and their own tour business.
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Cab driver C. logs on to the dispatch system at the start of his shift and then receives tour offers via the driver app, including the necessary tour data and a navigation suggestion for the journey if a tour is accepted. His customers are automatically informed of the remaining journey time, and the cab's availability in two minutes is signaled with a distinctive tone. C. confirms his arrival at the pick-up location by tapping the "Taxi is ready" button in the case of an app order and by calling the "Call customer" button in the case of a telephone order. Once the customer has boarded the taxi, C. first reports the destination to the dispatch server and then taps the "Journey begins" button to confirm that the taxi is occupied. With his knowledge and consent, the journey is tracked by the transfer server, on the one hand to protect C., and on the other hand to continuously determine when and where C. is likely to be free and available again. At the end of a trip, C. enters the taximeter amount in the app as well as the payment method (cash, card, app payment, invoice trip). At the end of the shift, C. then receives a list of his tours, his total income and his cash income for his statement. Using the QR code on the printed receipt, he can have the data printed out again correctly. C. can make corrections such as incorrect trips either directly via the app or later on the computer screen.
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Tour orderer D. regularly uses her customer app to order cabs. As she usually drives from the same pick-up addresses, the app offers her these as a list to choose from - including her more frequent destinations. She only uses the GPS location for new pick-up locations, e.g. in another city, to order a cab. Over time, she has clicked together a list of particularly suitable drivers, and usually one of these preferred drivers drives up after her order. If none of them are available nearby, she also gets to know other "drivers". She is informed of the time remaining until the cab arrives by a running clock, and in the final phase of the journey she also sees a cab symbol on the map with the current location. The license plate number and a picture of the car type are also transmitted.
D. is a customer of the nationwide app center "Taxiteam Deutschland". Her friend Z. has decided against becoming a customer of a local cab dispatch center. On the one hand, she finds its pure e-fleet very appealing, and on the other hand, she is an invoice customer there; her journeys are automatically debited from her account once a week and she receives a PDF invoice by email. She can order there either by phone or by app. When Z. once left a bag in the bag, a phone call to her local head office was enough to get her bag back quickly. If Z. is ever in another city, she can order a cab via the customer app in the same way as D.
- Project manager E. works at the app center "Taxiteam Deutschland". His main competitors are the multinational app centers Uber and FreeNow. Thanks to his press and advertising work, word has spread among some cab customers that the lower costs of the system and lower pressure on returns mean that the costs for the cab operators and drivers connected to the system are lower and therefore their income and satisfaction is higher. E. is also responsible for ensuring that the feedback from users of both the driver and customer apps is used for ongoing improvements to the brokerage system and the apps. He uses the positive feedback for his marketing activities on an ongoing basis. The "David versus Goliath" approach has helped his public relations work a lot, especially in the first few months. Thanks to a high degree of automation and a small team, he keeps costs low, which gives him a real competitive advantage over the "big players".
The total fleet of "Taxiteam Deutschland" consists of all users of the DriverApp, i.e. the pure app drivers without any other central connection as well as those who have joined one or more local cab dispatch centers. This does not play a role in the placement, only the "free" status and matches with the desired car and driver characteristics (e.g. "station wagon" or "speaks French") are decisive for the tour placement. E. regularly organizes regional and national meetings of "Taxiteam" users, at which current developments, wishes and criticism are discussed. Taxiteam Deutschland" is financed by the commission per cab tour arranged (EUR 0.69 net per tour). For cabs in core fleets, a monthly fixed price per car will be offered, as well as server hosting for the decentralized system.