Business Reporting
New reporting system replaces costly manual process and improves compliance for TfL
Project: change++ created a self-reporting tool enabling operators to directly upload data to NSL’s Taxi and Private Hire Operational Licensing Administration (TOLA) system.
Services: Business Reporting
Results: NSL has eliminated the need for its client, Transport for London (TfL), to manually input the data from 1000s of emails each week and provided a more secure, flexible way to store and share the data.
The client
NSL is the largest provider of on-street parking management services in the country and delivers a broad range of transport and related services to central and regional government. As part of this remit, it delivers, maintains and manages the licensing and inspection test service for taxis and private hire vehicles operating in the Greater London area, on TfL’s behalf.
Their needs
Since September 2016, all licensed operators of taxis and private hire vehicles have been required to provide the details of the drivers and vehicles used to fulfil private hire bookings the preceding week. NSL’s client, TfL, was faced with a significant challenge in collecting and storing this data.
A team of 11 licensing administrators was having to process between 1,700 and 2,000 emails (plus attachments) and record up to 65,000 vehicles and drivers, every week. The team then had to filter, store and analyse the data, just using Microsoft Excel. Once logged, this data was difficult to share. NSL wanted to help them find a way to collect the data more efficiently. It also wanted to offer a secure way to store and share the data, which contains personal information.
What we did
We created an ‘Operator Upload’ solution. This online tool allows taxi operators to log in securely and submit vehicle and driver information directly to NSL’s TOLA system. This eliminates the need for manual data handling by the TfL team, and provides greater flexibility for the user, full compliance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), increased accuracy and swifter analysis. The solution also allows the uploaded data to be cross matched against existing vehicle and driver records, improving data validation.
According to Simone Oyekanmi, Licensing manager for London taxi and private hire vehicles at TfL, a prime objective was to ensure public safety in London: “The solution delivers a much quicker, easier and more secure process for operators to share data. This gives TfL greater visibility of compliance and, most importantly, enables us to quickly identify and take action against non-compliance. We believe the travelling public will be safer as a result.”
The benefits
Simone Oyekanmi lists the benefits of the solution delivered to TfL by change++ as follows:
- The new system generates reports highlighting non-compliance, so action can be taken quickly to ensure public safety.
- The self-service facility makes it much easier for operators to upload data.
- Licensing can now be monitored more efficiently by a much smaller team.
- TfL team members now have more rewarding jobs, focussed on analysing, verifying and recommending licensing action rather than manually processing data.
- TfL now has greater visibility of all elements of licensed operator behaviour and overall compliance.
- It is now much easier to share the data securely with authorised stakeholders.
There are benefits for NSL too. The integration of the ‘Operator Upload’ solution with its case management tool, TOLA, gives it improved reporting options. NSL utilises tools from IBM Cognos Business Analytics to deliver business intelligence across many of its contracts. In this particular situation the IBM Cognos reporting structure is used to interrogate actions in the back-end system.
Tommy Doyle, NSL Account Director, comments, “It is imperative as a service provider that we strive to offer our clients innovative ideas and change to improve service delivery, enhance end-user experience and reduce costs to the benefit of all stakeholders. This particular initiative is a prime example of our continuing efforts to support our clients in achieving their goals.”