Case Studies

Case 1

Andrew’s Airport Parking - Parking Management System

The Business
As the name suggests, Andrew’s Airport Parking (AAP) provide short and long term parking for people travelling via air, with sites located just a few minutes drive from both Melbourne and Brisbane airports. Andrew’s attribute their success to "Good Old Fashioned Service".

As part of the business, the following services are provided:

  • Outdoor and Undercover parking
  • Courtesy shuttles to and from the airport
  • Full car cleaning and/or detailing
  • Car servicing and repairs
  • 24 hour security

The Problem
Since opening with only 2 staff in 1997, AAP have grown substantially. Today AAP have the capacity for around 1500 cars and employ more than 60 staff. Such a business requires a lot of administrative and service coordination.

When customers return from trips, their cars must be in a location ready to be picked up, and if cleaning and servicing have been requested, those services must have been completed before customer arrival. In the case of cleaning, this needs to be coordinated to occur within a short time before the customer’s arrival to ensure the car is still clean at pickup.

Customer details need to be on file, departure and arrival times easily available, referrals from partner organizations need to be tracked and commissions calculated monthly. A variable fee structure and membership based on frequency of parking is also maintained. Customer checkin and checkout must be fast and efficient due to the large number of transactions, ensuring customers make their flight deadlines.

While AAP had a custom computer system in operation, it suffered from numerous issues including crashing at critical times, doubling up on bookings and numerous other problems which were affecting the efficiency of the business. There were also a list of improvements planned to take the automation even further, including email confirmations and online bookings.

The Solution
AAP had a very clear understanding of their business processes which had made them successful over a long period. The challenge was to develop an application which supported and empowered those processes, and most importantly, it had to prompt, direct and remind staff of required actions, which is important when a large percentage of staff are casual.

The result was a database solution which is now central to all operations of the AAP business.

The Andrew’s Parking Management System (or APMS) functionality includes:

Bookings Management
  • Reservations and bookings are easily entered into the system. On any day, the system lists bookings in order of their expected arrival/departure.
  • Online bookings go straight into the system via the AAP web site
  • Customers are emailed confirmations of their bookings automatically.
  • Car locations are kept up to date by yard staff. Hours before customer return, yard staff are prompted to move cars to appropriate ready locations.
  • Staff are prompted when to wash, detail or service cars.
  • Member details are recorded and different memberships managed. Loyalty based member rates are recalculated nightly.
  • Referral partner details are recorded and referred bookings tracked with commissions calculated and paid monthly.
  • Referral partners have online access for entering bookings and tracking their own booking/performance history.
  • Corporate customer accounts are managed and invoiced at the end of each month.
  • Internal management facility for following up incidents and/or customer complaints.
Reporting
  • Various internal key performance indicator reports.
  • Referral summaries including regional mapping of customer distribution.

Conclusion
The solution developed by ALADN has not only solved the problems of the previous system, but completed the vision Andrew Shanahan (Managing Director) had for an application which truly supports the decision making processes and automates many of the finance, management, procedural, quality, service and communication tasks.

Customer Comment
"We have been dealing with ALADN System Solutions for over 2 years and have found their service and expertise to be excellent. The team at ALADN conduct themselves with honesty and integrity and have a depth of knowledge and experience that has produced a tailor made solution for the operation of our business, that is second to none. This system (APMS) operates all aspects of our day to day operations and was vastly complex to build. Andrew’s Airport Parking is considered the market leader in our industry. Paramount to our ongoing success in innovation has been our ability to embrace new technology and apply it in applications that further enhance the efficiency of the operation of our business. ALADN, with a keen understanding of our requirements, has played a large part in our innovation advancements. More recently ALADN have assisted with the upgrade of our web site where they have provided a solution that allows customer bookings that are made via our web site to be channelled directly into the APMS system, providing further savings and efficiency. ALADN also manage our ongoing requirements and are a pleasure to deal with and are always responsive to our needs especially during priority situations."

Andrew Shanahan
Managing Director
Andrew’s Airport Parking

Case 2

Safety Wise Solutions - Training Management Software

The Business
Safety Wise Solutions are a worldwide HSE (Health Safety Environment) consultancy & training provider based in Australia. Coordinating training courses around the world requires a high degree of administration and coordination. As well as organizing the courses themselves:

  • Materials must be ordered and delivered.
  • Consultants and trainers travel & accommodation requirements must be booked.
  • Travel expenses and consultant invoices must be paid.
  • Attendee certificates need to be printed and distributed, and
  • Course feedback needs to be recorded appropriately.

All this is managed by a small support team of only 2 people.

The Problem
Safety Wise came to ALADN with the problem many businesses wish they had. They were growing quickly. The number of courses they were coordinating worldwide was increasing rapidly and the administration and coordination of all of the associated tasks was becoming extremely hard to manage with the small support team. As courses were normally booked months in advance, keeping track of when tasks needed to be triggered and tracking the status of activities by 3rd party suppliers was also a major challenge. Simply hiring more people was not the solution. They hoped that a custom built business management application could solve the challenges they were facing.

The Solution
Safety Wise had a clear understanding of their business processes. All that was remaining was for ALADN to perform the business analysis and along with key personnel from Safety Wise Solutions, design an appropriate solution.

The result was a custom web based application called e-Bev. E-Bev today provides a complete management and communication system which is both powerful and easy to use. After seeing what was possible, Safety Wise Solutions, in conjunction with ALADN’s consultants, have continued to add new powerful modules to e-Bev to further improve the automation and efficiency, or more importantly, the service they provide to their customers and course attendees.

An important requirement in the development of e-Bev was to provide the consultants, trainers, suppliers and attendees with relevant access to the system, which was achieved in the following ways.

Consultants & Trainers
Consultants and trainers can look up company/contact information, view details of courses for which they are running and enter their own travel requests, preferences and expenses. At the completion of a course, they can add the course participants based on attendance sheets, as well as attaching their invoices and expenses for billing and reimbursement. All this can be done from anywhere in the world via the web.

Suppliers
When travel requests are entered by the consultants and trainers, the requests are passed to the appropriate Safety Wise support staff for review and approval. Upon approval, those requests are then forwarded to their travel supplier via e-Bev.

The most important supplier for Safety Wise is their printing supplier. The printer is responsible for the printing and delivery of training manuals and booklets to training locations all over the world. They are also responsible for printing and delivering certificates to course attendees. The printer has their own portal access into the e-Bev system, where they can manage the above printing and dispatch requests.

Course Attendees
At the completion of each course, the trainer enters the list of attendees into the e-Bev system. This triggers the printing and delivery of a Certificate of Attendance to each attendee. However in some instances, courses contain an attainment level. In these instances, attendees are automatically sent an email, offering them the opportunity to complete an online assessment. Successful completion of this online assessment, in the form of a multiple choice questionnaire, triggers the printing and delivery of the appropriate Certificate of Attainment.

Conclusion
The solution developed by ALADN has allowed Safety Wise solutions to take full control of the growing administrative and coordination requirements of a growing business, without the need to add any new support staff. As a registered training company, audits are performed regularly by appropriate regulatory bodies. The most recent of these resulted in a quick all clear and an acknowledgment that their electronic record keeping was one of the best they had seen in the industry.

Customer Comment
"As a worldwide HSE consultancy & training provider based in Australia, real time administrative coordination is paramount. The deployment of consultants and trainers; booking their travel requirements and ensuring the timely delivery of training material to training venues locally and in some of the remotest parts of the world requires a robust and sophisticated management system. Our business requires our consultants to be able to input their expenses and invoices 24/7 from around the globe even when the office is closed. As a training provider we need to record details of our course attendees, distribute certificates and provide our clients with flexible solutions such as on-line assessments. We sought an automated solution to minimize our administration workload with the minimum of support staff. We designed and developed a unique solution customized to our business needs in partnership with ALADN. ALADN understood our business and our needs, developed an elegant, user friendly solution and continue to manage and develop our e-Bev Business Management System to ensure the system grows with our business. The implementation of e-Bev has transformed the day to day operation of our business and allowed us to focus on the truly value adding activities of meeting our clients needs."

Gerry Gibb
Managing Director
Safety Wise Solutions