Below is the feature list outside of the standard features you would expect from a DMS (dispatch management system). A full list of features would be exhaustive. If you have any specific questions please feel free to email us using the email address at the bottom of this page and we will be happy to help.
Customer Account Management
- Ability to assign customer accounts and / or users to specific service types, i.e Standard, Executive, VIP to prevent booking outside of allowed services offered.
- Grade customer account, which is directly linked to the grading on the driver profile, allows you to restrict drivers from working on particular customer accounts.
Customer Reference Capture
- Allows you to capture up to 7 customer bespoke booking references, e.g. Cost Centre, Project Reference, Budget Centre etc. These can be named specifically as defined by the customer and will appear across all booking modules, internal booking engine, the passenger app, the B2B web booking engine so each booker is familiar with the information being asked.
- Against each customer account you can upload an excel file that would contain reference numbers provided by the customer, at the time of booking references provided by the customer will be validated against this list. If the number not present then the booking is restricted.
Customer Account Bookers
- You can add bookers to each customer account, they can then use our B2B and B2C web booking engines, and the passenger mobile app. The user has its own communication plan and follows the rules and compliance information requirements of the parent customer account.
Communication Preferences
You can, on a customer by customer basis (even down to individual users for each customer) define a communication plan, in any language, that would enable you to;
- Send an email and / or an SMS with a booking confirmation.
- Send an email and / or an SMS when the vehicle is en-route, or approaching, or both.
- Send an email and / or an SMS as a reminder 24hrs prior to the time of booking.
- Send an email and / or an SMS with a link to track their vehicle in real time with any or all of the above communications.
- Send an SMS when the flight the passenger(s) are on is delayed to let them know that you are tracking the flight and are aware of the delay, helps prevent unnecessary phone calls.
Booking and Dispatch Options
- Ability to highlight a customer account so it stands out on the unallocated rides page, making it more visible to a dispatcher.
- Ability to add a percentage value that when SmartDispatch™ runs it allocates all rides booked under the particular customer account ahead of time by adding the value to the dispatch time. Enables you to prioritise customer accounts over others, ensuring a better service delivery.
- Option to prevent a driver handing back the ride from the driver app, helps deliver constant service to your high profile accounts.
- Customer feedback module to reach out to passengers, post ride, to gain their opinion, options include, Feefo, DriveProfit or our internal feedback process.
- On-demand surge pricing, same principle as flight operators use, the closer to the time of travel you can uplift the price based on the date time the request is being made in relation to the date time of the booking.
- Option to switch SmartDispatch™ on or off.
Web Plugin and Passenger App Commands
- Options to determine if a particular customer account can make bookings on the B2B corporate web booker or the passenger app.
- Options to hide or show the client price during the booking process to bookers, this may not be the case when corporate users are making reservations.
- Option to hide or show the price the driver receives for the rides on the driver app, prevents customer account users seeing the margins.
Financial and Billing
- Internal invoicing module to bill clients.
- Option to add Call Center charges for bookings made over the phone. Marketing tool to driver bookers to using the web and mobile apps.
- Option to calculate prices for a particular customer using base to base / garage to garage round robin.
- Permanent customer account notes, these can be set for call takers, dispatchers and drivers and will appear in the booking to the relevant viewer.
Legal and Compliance
- Options to have individual Terms and Conditions for each customer account when sending any communication, booking confirmation, booking amendment, ride status updates and / or invoicing.
Meeting Boards
- Our driver app, when loaded on a tablet, acts as a meeting board with the passenger name printed clearly on the screen. You can also upload on a per customer account basis a set of unique logos that are displayed along the top of the screen.
Service Type Management
- Add short and long descriptions to each vehicle type that are displayed in ride status communications, and on our web and mobile booking apps.
- Set a specific service type at zero tax rate.
- Ability to dispatch vehicle sooner than others by adding a variable value to the SmartDispatch™ algorithm. Also set a minimum dispatch time, and switch SmartDispatch™ off on a per vehicle basis
- Set pricing plan for a vehicle type as distance only, time only (hourly hire), or combination of time and distance.
- Set vehicle as a ride share vehicle and sell individual seats (Pricing matrix supports per seat pricing).
- Highlight booking for selected vehicle type on the dispatch page to make it pop-out.
- Set a minimum time before a booking can be made online or through passenger mobile booking app.
- Set times of day where bookings cannot be made online or through passenger mobile app, restrict overnight bookings for example where the request is for an early morning pickup but you do not operate a 24hr office operation..
- Set an image against the service type that is displayed online and in the passenger mobile booking app
Service Type Pricing - iVcardo's pricing matrix is one the most complex in the world and will cover any and all current used pricing methods.
Module to control pricing variables based on;
- Time of day
- Date range
- Surge pricing, looks at current date and time of request and date and time of booking. Same principal as airlines use, the closer to the time of booking the higher the price.
- Create multiple price matrices for a customer account and service type for different zones. These zones could be a country where the customer travels in various countries, or a zone around an airport where you want to alter the price, a city centre, even down to a zone that has been drawn around a single building where you can set a completely different pricing matrix.
- Assign chargeable attributes to each vehicle type, such as baby seat, as well as non-chargeable attributes such as free newspaper etc.
- Set a minimum fare, and option to include distance in that minimum price.
- Apply a one of charge per vehicle type, allows you to run duplicate matrices with different one of fixed charges for each.
- Wait and return formula to apply a cheaper fare for the return leg of the single ride.
- Round charges up to the nearest denomination.
- Set waiting time charges per minute, set the start time for waiting time to commence where you want to offer an agreed allowed amount, then apply increments as to how the waiting time is charged, e.g. by 5, 10, 15, 30 minute intervals
- Apply a charge where the ride booked has a stop address, or multiple addresses, added between the collection and destination addresses.
- Apply a traffic factor on a per service type basis to increase the distance calculated and apply that extra distance to the pricing algorithm. Also ability to round up the distance so that it shows in whole numbers, affects pricing.
- Apply a travel time factor on a per service type basis to increase the trip time calculated and apply that to the pricing algorithm. Also ability to round up the time so that it shows in whole numbers, affects pricing.
- Add gratuities on a per vehicle type that are charged as a one of fee.
- Apply fuel surcharge on a per vehicle type basis, may be where fuel prices hike quickly.
- Set pricing using distance bands so you can offer a sliding scale matrix for longer distances.
- Set pricing using hourly bands so you can offer a sliding scale matrix for longer hires.
Fleet Asset Management
- Complete document handling suite to store and view remotely documents relating to the vehicle, insurance, taxi license, permits etc.
- Assign operating permits relating to the vehicle with expiry dates. When these dates are reached the vehicle is excluded from performing rides. Increases passenger safety.
- Platform validates each vehicle when it is added and stores CO2 emission data on a per ride basis for reporting and offsetting.
- Assign a vehicle to perform another service type, e.g. a standard MPV / people mover can perform rides where a standard saloon is requested, but cannot perform rides where a VIP saloon has been requested.
- Ability to assign attributes where the vehicle has equipment on board, e.g. WiFi, baby seat, newspaper etc.
Driver Management
- Complete document handling suite to store and view remotely documents relating to the driver, insurance, taxi license, permits etc.
- Assign operating permits relating to the driver with expiry dates. When these dates are reached the driver is excluded from performing rides. Increases passenger safety.
- Driver portal with full access to profile and ride management. Compliance information added by the fleet owner cannot be changed by the driver online.
- Internal rating process that is included in the SmartDispatch™ algorithm to ensure that clients are being sent the best driver first (optional setting). Enhances performance from drivers where earnings are reduced until behaviour increases.
- Add image for facial recognition to prevent proxy driving. Ensures the driver behind the wheel is the same driver on-boarded by the fleet owner when recruited.
- Add profile image which is sent to clients via SMS and / or email with ride statuses, en-route, approaching etc. Some countries this is law but is good feature for passengers to know what the driver should look like when getting into a vehicle.
- Grade driver, which is directly linked to the grading on the customer account, allows you to restrict drivers from working on particular customer accounts.
- System will offer driver nearest rides booked for tomorrow morning based on their home address, self assignment (optional).
- Add emergency contact numbers in case of issues.
- Set native language of driver, app and driver portal will be displayed in that language.
- Set maximum working hours so prevent driver working too long and risking public safety.
- Set the minimum break time between shifts so they cannot log off and straight back on again.
- Wake up message for early morning bookings. Where the driver has not yet logged on, you can set the option to send an SMS message to the driver telling him to log on, also alerts dispatcher.
- You can add an affiliate to your instance, then add a driver and attach to that driver to the affiliate, you can then dispatch rides to them as though they were one of your own drivers. This allows you to pay them as a company and not as a driver.
- On the driver app, and portal, you can allow drivers to view bookings in the future, looking ahead from hours, days, weeks or a whole year on a driver by driver basis. This may work well where you have temporary drivers who may work occasional for you and can self assign rides in the future, whereas you can hide the future from your dedicated fleet.
Financial and Billing - all options below are calculated during the pay run and results are exported to either your online accounting package or an excel spreadsheet / PDF
- Options to determine whether a driver is self employed or employed.
- Charge driver a fixed rate for a given period.
- Charge driver a variable for a given period based on earnings.
- Charge driver a commission for any cash that has been collected in vehicle.
- Charge driver a fee for fleet insurance for a given period.
- Charge driver a fee for vehicle rent for a given period.
- Charge driver a technology fee where equipment for a given period.
- Set an individual tax rate for a driver.
- Option to hold back parking charge payments where the driver uses a company card for example.
- Where a ride has been cancelled on arrival and a payment is due to the driver you can set on a per driver basis the percentage of the ride fee to be paid.
Geography, Shapes and Zone Pricing
This module enables you to draw shapes, join them together as a route and then set prices against those shapes on a per customer and per service type basis.
- Draw zones such as airports, towns cities even down to a single building.
- Module that allows you to pull government authoritative data for a specific zone, e.g. New York, Paris, down to towns, villages and suburbs. These shapes are drawn as per the specified legal authority data provided.
- Set specific prices for each customer account (or a global price), affiliate and driver for each route.
- Copy route prices between customer accounts or from service type to service type to save time.
- Ability to add an URL to eahc route when using our B2C web booking engine that will hyperlink the route displayed on the page to a specific URL on your site.
Managing and Deploying and Affiliate Network
Create a affiliate instance in iVcardo which is automatically paired to your instance. This is not parent child, the newly created instance is setup as a many to many relationship allowing the affiliate to log into their own portal to assign and track your rides sent to them. You can also import an excel file to instantly create multiple affiliate instances at the same time.
Create an instance to either give access to our full DMS that they can use to book and manage their own rides, or create it so the affiliate logs into iVcardo's RideBridge™ platform which is geared up to purely connect demand and supply.
Affiliate Rules Engine
After creating the instance you can then assign affiliates to customer accounts, this enables you to restrict certain affiliates from carrying out rides for particular customers, it could be that they do not operate in the area where the customer has requests.
- Auto dispatch bookings as they come in to your affiliate network based on set of rules around operating location and affiliate overlap in same area. Options are Best Wins, Cheapest Wins, Equal Split.
- Suspend affiliate to stop rides being allocated
- Option to allow the affiliate to edit a booking, when off then no action can be taken by the affiliate , only the ride owner can make changes. Same applies to cancellations.
- Where iVcardo RAP (Ride Aggregation Platform) is being used you can set the ride communications, booking confirmation, ride status updates etc to come directly from the affiliate and in their branding. You can also set the option so the affiliate can invoice the client directly.
- When ride is allocated you can apply a set of rules around acceptance method. If the affiliate is using iVcardo to manage their whole fleet then automatic acceptance can be set, if they are using RideBridge then a manual method is applied, this is both on the email sent to the affiliate as well as on the unallocated bookings page where they can click and accept. You can set acceptance timeout limits, if reached the ride is automatically handed back to the ride owner. You can also set a Hand-Back time out limit so the affiliate cannot hand back a ride within a certain time frame before the Time Of Booking.
- You can set a fixed amount per booking sent to the affiliate which will be calculated when the affiliate invoice (self-billing) is generated.
- Ability to create zone to zone prices on a per affiliate and per customer basis, you can have different affiliates running off different prices for the same customer in the same area.
- Ability to view prices set by affiliates, where the affiliate is the price maker.
- Affiliate self billing module where you can generate invoices on their behalf.
Internal Booking Module
Book outbound and return trip in a single click
Book rides based on schedule, follows same principal as Microsoft Outlook recurring calendars, daily, weekdays, same day each week etc etc. End after x occurrences, or set to end on fixed date.
Manually type address, or select a place on a map where Google cannot provide data. Attach notes to that address to be sent with booking.
Add multiple via / stop addresses to a booking, move them up and down as required. Assign a passenger to each address so the driver knows who he is collecting at each address.
Enter flight number and system will validate the flight and populate the collection address automatically. To give the driver a better understanding of when the passenger may come through you can;
- Attach to the landing time the expected time to exit gate
- Select hand or hold luggage so the driver knows if they ay have to wait for the luggage to be collected
- Select if Visa clearance is required, this prevents the driver leaving too early
When adding multiple passengers you can assign one as the lead passenger so the driver is aware who is in control of the group.
Define the language of the passenger so that all email and SMS message communications are sent in the passengers own language.
Integrate your PBX so when the phone rings a popup is displayed with the booking details of the caller from the CALLER ID, previous trips and all previous addresses are listed for quick and simple booking.
Assign attributes to a booking, baby seat, newspaper etc.
Write notes against each booking that can be shared internally only, or with the customer, or with the affiliate.
Select Quiet Mode which informs driver that passenger does not want a discussion.
Dispatch Module
Un-allocated Rides
Manually assign a ride to a driver, system determines whether driver is logged onto the app and whether they are in the correct vehicle type as specified in the booking.
Bring forward the dispatch time to Now sending ride immediately, when SmartDispatch™ is on.
Click Find Nearest button and system will show driver eligible and available for the booking, uses real-time traffic information and geolocation.
Pre-allocate a ride to a driver in the future, this can be seen by the driver in both the driver app and the driver portal. The driver can accept the ride from either app.
Assign new driver to a ride by email address only, driver then self on-boards in the vehicle and ride is pulled through.
Assign a ride to an affiliate.
Messaging panel that displays;
- Late car alerts - platform calculation based on real-time traffic and geofencing.
- Late flight alerts - platform tracks and monitors all flights from 2 hours before take off to landing time. Shows late arrival, cancellations and diversions.
- Fleet messages from drivers
Ability to put driver on discipline, with an expiry date which will lock them out until the period is over.
Ability to switch off VF Virtual Fleet in peak periods so demand partners cannot access your own supply
Ability to switch between instances if operating in multiple states, counties or countries where those instances operate as independent businesses tied together to the parent instance.
Send fleet message to the driver app, and / or SMS message
- All drivers
- Only drivers logged on
- A particular driver
Control the canned messages that are displayed on the driver app, saves time when the same questions are asked by drivers
See map of fleet location and status.
Allocated Rides
Mouse over ride and popup will show you accurate arrival time of the vehicle and distance, key when client is on the phone asking where the car is. Also show time and distance to destination once status has changed to passenger on board.
Map to show exact location of vehicle in relation to the addresses listed against the booking.
Other
When allocating rides for the next day page shows who is available and which rides needs to be assigned. The system can also be set to show each driver a choice of rides to select from based on their home address.
View of all rides sent to an affiliate
View of all rides received from demand partners
Ride audit page to show complete history with dates and times of who changed / updated what and when, along with map that shows where driver was when statuses were updated.
Ride issue management control.
View to see which drivers have not logged on inline with their determined shifts.