Go-Ahead Group Replaces Manual Systems with a More Intuitive, End-User Friendly Process
September 12, 2022
After the Government’s Minister for Transportation announces new mandate, the Go-Ahead Group was tasked with a cumbersome process change
Case Study – Transport
Updating your data processes will remove inefficiencies, inaccuracies, and dependencies on other resources, while giving employees back time in their day to complete other business tasks and provide the utmost customer service.
The Customer
The Go-Ahead Group is one of the UK’s leading public transport providers offering more than a billion journeys each year. Discover how More4apps tools reshaped the Go-Ahead Group’s invoicing system within 24 hours.
Go-Ahead’s rail operation is the busiest in the UK. It is responsible for around 30% of all train passenger journeys with bus operations running about 25% of London services and 11% of the UK market as a whole.
The Challenge
In February of 2018, the Government’s Minister for Transportation announced changes about reimbursements for delayed or canceled journeys.
- First, the threshold would be reduced from 30 minutes to 15 minutes, increasing the number of expected compensation claims
- Second, the compensation would move from vouchers to cash-based
- Third, compensation would be made on a sliding scale that was based on the length of the delay and the type of ticket purchased
Initially, up to 10,000 transactions a week would need processing. Since the company handled transactions manually, this increase would seriously impact their employee’s tasks and disrupt business.
Scoping a Solution
The Department for Transportation made it vital for all transport operators to execute the updated refund scheme to include:
- Full and partial refunds
- Cash compensation
- Different processes for season tickets vs non-season tickets
- A fast turn-around for customers
- A very tight time line for implementation
To abide by the Department of Transportation’s changes, the Go-Ahead Group determined that they must adhere to strict internal operations for payments, merge with the current Oracle EBS, and allow enough time for testing ahead of the go live date to remain operating.
Therefore, the Go-Ahead Group had to address their current manual system because it couldn’t cope with the bigger and now complex workload. Their ideal solution needed to be intuitive for users to understand and communicate with customers.
The Go-Ahead Group was already facing a processing bottleneck as source data was through a third-party CRM. With the customer’s CRM involved it meant that it would need implementing into Oracle. The resource lead-time and project lifecycle wouldn’t be good, making meeting the strict target date harder to uphold.
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Changes to EBS
From within their EBS setup, the Go-Ahead Group made changes to the custom version of one-time payments, which is where vital data was held in DFFs . They changed the BACs EFT payment program to use the DFFs to pay to the correct person and account.
The Solution
After looking into their options, the Go-Ahead Group pursued the More4apps suite of products. These products use Microsoft Excel and Oracle’s public API’s.
The user-friendly interface allows for mass entry and manipulation of data from any source. Moreover, More4apps solutions are cost-effective, easily integrated, and give employees time back in their day to focus on other tasks while supporting a work/life balance.
The Formula for Successful Data Processing
Data including the BACs EFT information, customer name, and one-off details from the DFF and more would be extracted from the customer CRM and transferred to the More4apps solution.
From the More4apps Excel spreadsheet, the data uploaded directly into Oracle EBS. Data is validated in real-time and automatically mapped to the appropriate Oracle fields. Employees created payments and accepted them using the Go-Ahead Group’s usual process, which actioned payments and downloaded the data into the More4apps spreadsheet.
Status updates of each claim were communicated to the customer through their CRM. More4apps experts provided hands-on instructions for the test system install and end-user training.
Results
A fully audited system that fixed closer to 20,000 claims a week and quickly implemented.
Executives reported that the Go-Ahead Group experienced:
- Faster-than-expected installation
- Robust interface process due to time and resources saved
- More audit control and reporting measures
- Additional dashboard features
The uptake of the tools among Oracle users has been contagious because they’re simple to use. Furthermore, typical requirements, like generating batches of invoices, were complete in minutes rather than hours. Data improvements are so vast that other programs, such as Supplier & Employee Maintenance and AR Invoice processing, have introduced More4apps solutions across the entire company.
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