Transport software is a means of automating mundane tasks and making your life easier! But for some, there are fears surrounding using software vs using paper or just fears about computer systems in general, and that sense of losing control.
Well if you think about it, no matter what you do currently to manage your transport services it’s still a system. Take a diary for example.
1. You still need to capture the passenger details.
2. You still need to enter the date the journey is required for.
3. You then need to write down in the diary the driver that’s going to take them there
4. You also need the pickup time the driver suggests.
That process is no different in the transport software Road XS.
But it is different you say, it’s on a computer and I don’t know where the data is?
Sure, it’s a different diary, it’s a different medium, but the process is the same. The only difference is, you don’t have to write down the passenger details, you don’t need to write down the driver and you don’t need to worry about knowing if the driver is available or not – the transport software knows this already!
But how does the transport software know this?
The answer is code. Every step, every process, every click, every screen (I can go on but I won’t), is represented by code. In fact, there is so much code in Road XS (over 700,000 lines of it) that we have systems in place to manage the code. We bundle code together – we like to call these modules or plugins! This way when an update happens we can narrow down where a bug might be or where an improvement needs to be made and act accordingly – without reading 700,000 lines of code from top to bottom. Correct, there is method in our madness! Well … to some degree.
But what about my data – I don’t know where it is? Is it mine?
Yes. The data with us has always been yours. In fact, the GDPR essentially makes sure the data is yours – which is a good thing right?! We at Road XS are data processors – you are the data manager. Part of the GDPR is about keeping your data up to date and secure. So, if a passenger address changes, you need to ensure this is kept up to date, otherwise, well how do you know where they need picking up from? Road XS transport software makes this easier for you because you only have to update it from one place. If you take the diary example, you’d have to keep remembering all that passenger data and each time a journey is taken you’d need to write it down each time. With Road XS you just do a quick lookup and select the passenger from the list. Neat right – thank the code for that! And lots of coffee!
Bu what the heck is the cloud? It’s raining does that make it slower?
Fortunately, and given that we are in the UK – the weather has no impact on cloud services. If it did I think we’d have a problem, certainly over the winter! No, the cloud is merely a buzz word concocted and refined by marketing nerds. It’s a way of explaining that essentially you can access your data from anywhere with a slight irony being that the data is sometimes underground. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen any servers flying about in the air, I mean one that would be dangerous but also, it’d ruin the view. I have seen servers in Iceland though, because well they get hot and need lots of cooling. Microsoft even dumped some of their cloud servers into the sea! All a cloud server is, is the point where you data resides and the transport software connects you to this data securely. Well Road XS does anyway. In fact so securely you can’t access it outside the office (if you switch that feature on!).
Doesn’t transport software fall over a lot and go wrong?
Yep all the time, it’s barely up to be fair and hardly ever works. No! Of course not, but issues do arise from time to time. Sadly, in the press when you see a major cloud issue, IT melt-downs or hacking, the cloud is blamed. Well there are several factors which impact up-time (the phrase for how long a service has been up) and downtime (the time the service is down). For example, if your internet went offline then you might struggle to access a cloud-based service … but it doesn’t mean you’re stuck like you were 10 years ago, you can simply take a laptop or large tablet to the coffee shop and keep going there if you really need to. You could even connect to a 4G network. That’s quicker in most cases than basic broadband! Not kidding! The world has moved on a long way in terms of connectivity so the days of downtime due to internet connections are limited now.
Sometimes software updates don’t always go right – if they did then why do we get so many app updates! They affect everyone. The issue is how issues are dealt with. With Road XS we focused on ensuring that issues are captured easily, quickly and get dealt with. We have small release cycles generally to keep updates to a minimum so when they occur we can quickly rectify any issues.
We hope this article has alleviated some of the fears you might have surrounding the use of transport software for your services. If you still have concerns or now have a flood of questions we’d be happy to hear from you!
