Collect Services streamlines the enforcement planning process

The journeys of mobile staff can be planned and routed much more quickly, and in finer detail than ever before, in the latest version of a ground-breaking system in use with Collect Services, one of Britain’s leading firms of enforcement agents. The system has been built for the company by Kingswood MapMechanics, using a range of routing, scheduling and digital mapping tools.

Collect Services says since introducing the current version of system, it has achieved a 30 per cent reduction in fuel used by its teams of enforcement agents, along with a 40 per cent improvement in productivity and a 45 per cent saving in staff costs. This latest version is in turn based on a system first supplied by Kingswood MapMechanics in the early 1990s.

New features in the latest version consolidate these gains, and introduce further improvements – among them a reduction of several hours a week in the scheduling task.

Such has been the interest generated by the system throughout the market served by Collect Services that the company is now making it available to other enforcement companies.

The package draws together two key PC-based software systems supplied and supported in Britain by Kingswood MapMechanics – the TruckStops routing and scheduling system, and the GeoConcept geographic information system. It enables schedules at Collect Services to be made by allocating journeys to enforcement agents interactively on screen maps, then transferring the data to TruckStops for automatic scheduling.

One of the key advances in the new version is the introduction of a feature called “collections”, which adds extra power to the route selection process. The system continues to use GeoConcept to extract call points from the company’s Sybase database system and display them on a digital map. The company’s route allocators can select calls for individual enforcement agents interactively, simply by drawing a freeform shape around the area containing the required call points.

Now, however, new functionality has been added. For instance, the home addresses of all agents can be permanently stored, so that they can be displayed automatically and selected as the start and end points of journeys. This feature is ideal when it comes to processing the data by TruckStops, which can schedule journeys to start and end at any point (in this instance, an enforcement agent’s home), not just at fixed bases.

Using a series of simple dialog boxes, planners can now give names to areas, allocate jobs to agents, agents to routes and journeys to specific dates, and save all the relevant details for subsequent routing. Grid references of call points are also captured and stored automatically. GeoConcept achieves all this by querying an underlying Microsoft Access database. Then when the calls have been allocated, the system displays them in an “agent work schedule” – an easy-to-understand grid listing work against enforcement agents’ names and days of the week.

Once all these details have been assembled, they can now be passed directly to TruckStops for routing and scheduling. There is nothing to re-key, and no data to transfer from one system to another. The whole process is triggered seamlessly at the press of the single button. In the words of IT director Neil Walters: “The new system eliminates paperwork travelling round the office.”

The map display itself has also been enhanced. In place of the raster street-level data used before, which essentially presented a “picture” of the street plan under review, the system now uses NAVTECH vector street-level data. “This means we can suppress features like lakes that aren’t relevant, and see our call points much more clearly,” Neil Walters says.

This feature has particular importance, since the system can now display calls in different colours according to their status (calls requiring a visit, calls allocated to a enforcement agent so far, and so on). “We wanted to make the call points as easy to see as possible.”

The clarity of the display is also enhanced by the introduction of GeoConcept’s Smartlabel feature, which automatically places street names and other legends in the most relevant position on a map consistent with legibility.

To enhance the process of selecting call points, Kingswood MapMechanics has supplied the Code-Point geocoding file, which gives the system a much higher chance of pinpointing the exact location of each address, and for instance placing it on the correct side of the street. “This is invaluable for helping us avoid routes where enforcement agents have to cross main roads or other obstacles,” Neil Walters says.

A further new feature, “sweep”, allows the company to plan journeys that include the whole of a target area (west London, for instance), and then shades the map a different colour to show which parts have been allocated so far – with the relevant agents’ names displayed on each selected area.

The evolution of the system continues. Early in 2004, the company will be trialling a facility for viewing the schedules produced by TruckStops in GeoConcept and displaying the routes on maps, or “joining up the dots,” as Neil Walters puts it. “This could be an invaluable tool for reviewing performance and fine-tuning the planning process.”

The company is also aiming to introduce the facility to print out hard copies of the enforcement agent schedules produced in GeoConcept, and also to print out lists of calls. It might also be looking at printing out maps with call points marked in the order TruckStops has decided they should be visited.

According to Collect Services’ managing director, David Rayner: “Efficiency is the key to success for a business like ours. With the latest version of the Kingswood MapMechanics system, not only have we saved planning time in the office, we’ve also saved time for our enforcement agents out on the road. All of which equates to better collection rates – which is what it’s all about.” He adds: “Operating this system is one of the easiest IT functions I’ve ever come across.”

Collect Services is based at Ickenham, west of London, and handles around 200,000 instructions a year with a team of 15 enforcement agents. Its daily call rate per enforcement agent is now around 50 to 60 – nearly three times the national average of 23 calls.