Better flow at Vägverket
Vägverket Färjerederi is one of the units within Vägverket and with its 63 yellow ferries they constitute the largest shipping company in Sweden. With 37 ferry routes they transport 21 million passengers and 11 million vehicles per year.
Challenge
Vägverket is commissioned by Ekerö municipality to operate the route, which is the only route with electronic payment system. The old system was worn down, ungainly and a technical set back. They also wanted to minimize managing obsolete valuable documents. Since this was anything but a standard solution it turned out to be hard to find a suitable supplier.
- Optiscan was the only supplier that could present a concrete proposal, says Mattias Bergsten, manager of the route and orderer of the system. Besides that, they were already Cisco-certified which helped a lot
Solution
Optiscan came up with an idea where all communication would be wireless and the paper tickets could be eliminated. Vägverket choose to go ahead with the proposal and a joint project group started to develop the solution.
The new payment system consists of a light and weather durable hand held computer and a compact receipt printer. Both units communicate over the wireless network on every ferry. The wireless network is then, via radio link, connected to a server at the ferry station which manages the replication to the data centre in Borlänge.
Passengers can; as before, choose to pay in cash on board the ferry. It is also possible to pre pay a number of trips with a credit card in an automatic machine ashore. The passenger gets a receipt with a bar code which the personnel on board scans. A plastic card is loaded with the right number of trips that the passenger bought and can be refilled unlimited number of times. The barcode on the plastic card can be red through the vehicle window, especially advantageous during cold days. The hand held gives notice when a card needs to be refilled and the system supports 12 different rates for various combinations of vehicles and passengers.
Mattias is impressed by the way Optiscan handled the limited time frame from idea to go-live date. Vägverket has very high quality regulations and the connection to the data centre in Borlänge demanded an advanced solution.
- They have met us very well and they solved any problem that occurred during the project. It takes courage to take on a project with this restricted time frame.
Benefits
- The new hand held solution is built on a standard platform yet open and adjustable for future equipment and payment systems, Mattias explains.
At the next stage, for example, the hand held computers will communicate via GPRS to an own server to increase the security and availability even further. Existing devices can be utilized and the next step could be to offer the passengers to pay with their own cell phone.
For the personnel, getting payments is quicker on every tour and the system supports Euro, change repayment, balance control per employee and accounting. They have powerful equipment for statistics, forecast and follow-up. A lot of the earlier paper work has been removed and errors can be taken care of just by pressing a few keys. In addition, sales can be followed-up in real-time and another delicacy is that the solution has a locking device for credit card customer who has unpaid invoices to the company.
Implementing the system has made it more attractive for the travellers to pay with credit card, which Mattias thinks is going to reduce handling cash in the long run. Managing valuable document has already reduced; the plastic cards are valueless before they are loaded with travels.
The application in the hand held is also an improvement for the staff. It is quick, clear and intuitive.
- One demand was that the application should be easy to learn and the time it takes to educate new personnel is now radically reduced, Mattias reveals.
Our passengers have been very satisfied. They get even quicker service, they don´t need the obsolete paper booklets and they don´t have to use cash, if the don´t want to.
