Apollo Private Hire reaps the benefit of auto allocation and dynamic delays from Magenta Technology
[3 June 2019] – Private hire and taxi dispatch software specialist, Magenta Technology, is working with Apollo Private Hire to revolutionise its fleet planning and customer service offering. Magenta’s forward-thinking technology is also enabling family-run Apollo to monitor, control and ultimately cut its CO2 emissions. Owned by Bob and Tom Veitch, Apollo is reaping the reward of implementing Magenta, a lesser known software supplier to many in the industry, but a hugely powerful asset to those ‘in the know’.
Apollo Private Hire employs 75 drivers and operates a mixed fleet of vehicles serving the Maidstone and Ashford areas. Founded in 2002 by father and son team, Bob and Tom Veitch, the operator has a mixed profile of both cash and corporate account work which is planned out of its Maidstone HQ. Having previously relied on a simple job booking system, which required a large amount of manual intervention, director Tom started to look for a smarter, more reliable way to plan their growing operation.
“There are many automated despatch planning systems out there in the market making grand claims about auto allocation and dynamic response times, but when I looked under the hood many of the industry stalwarts just couldn’t operate in a truly dynamic, autonomous way”, comments Tom Veitch. “Magenta was just different from the beginning; no flashy sales people promising me the earth, just a passionate team with a great product which, when I got to see it first hand, was the only system that could really offer what we wanted – real time auto allocation, dynamic response times for and a user- friendly, yet advanced, booking App”.
Magenta’s private hire and taxi dispatch software includes an ‘autonomics’ dispatch engine. This enables the system to effectively think for itself, treating the whole vehicle fleet as one living, breathing resource. With no zone or queue restrictions, the system enables operators to allocate jobs to drivers more efficiently, reducing idle time and dead mileage, enabling drivers to maximise driver time and earning capacity. Apollo is currently auto allocating 99% of it’s work, a vast improvement on previous working practices. Magenta also offers customisable web and mobile apps for both passengers and drivers, which has seen Apollo increase its app-based businesses by 14%.
“At Magenta we pride ourselves on being a software partner, not just a supplier”, comments Nadia Temple, Magenta’s Head of Product and Customer Experience. “The Apollo Private Hire implementation is a fantastic example of how, when supplier and client work closely together, great things can be achieved”.