Time is Not Just Lost to Traffic: Philippine Companies Employ an Average of 7 Individuals to Manually Manage Corporate Shuttle Fleets

The Disadvantages of Manual Dispatching 

Manila, August 19, 2020- Smart mobility technology firm SWAT Mobility (SWAT) found in a recent study that companies in the Philippines employ an average of 7 people, depending on the company size, just to manually organize transportation routes for their employee shuttle or bus fleets.

For its study, SWAT studied five large corporations in Metro Manila that employ individuals to organize transportation routes for their employees. One of the corporations, a property developer headquartered in Taguig City, assigns a single full-time individual to manage transportation services for 40 people. Meanwhile, a telecommunications company in Metro Manila with about 600 employees designates 12 contact points who coordinate transportation routes across 120 vehicles.

The other cases were no different. A professional services company has 12 contact points who manually organize transportation routes across 60 vehicles for around 400 of the firm’s employees. A local banking firm employs up to seven individuals to arrange 40 fixed bus routes for 800 employees. Lastly, an outsourcing services provider initially had two employees assigned to manage corporate fleets for 130 people.

Over the past few years, the Philippines has become known for its horrible traffic congestion. In 2019, location technology specialist TomTom reported that Metro Manila has the second worst traffic congestion out of the 416 cities surveyed worldwide. On a similar note, traffic navigation software and application Waze disclosed that Manila is the world’s worst city for drivers. The Boston Consulting Group also showed in a study that Filipinos lose 16 days and 100,000 pesos of income a year due to traffic problems in Metro Manila alone.

Filipinos only believe that they lose time and productivity to traffic when in reality, another factor plays in this matter, one that some companies experience the most: the manual dispatchment of corporate transportation fleets. This is a tremendously overlooked area in which they can improve processes for better time and resource management. The average 7 employees that are assigned to organize corporate bus and shuttle routes for employees could otherwise be tackling other, more meaningful work if the manual process is improved.

Tedious Tasks

Employees assigned to take care of transport are kept busy with a number of tedious tasks:

• Collecting requests from staff and department heads through phone, email, or instant messages, including many last-minute changes
• Grouping employees by location, creating bus routes, and communicating those routes to drivers
• Collating and keeping passenger manifest records - usually a paper-based process where drivers need to remember to return records to a transport coordinator, who then has to type all the written information into a spreadsheet for record-keeping
• Chasing passengers and drivers who cannot connect at scheduled time due to traffic delays
  

This work requires late night and weekend overtime work, creates constant headaches, and keeps employees from doing the work they were hired to do.

Taming Transport Chaos

SWAT Mobility is a Singapore-based company that provides demand-responsive ride-sharing technology in high capacity vehicles.  SWAT’s technology enables companies to digitize their employee transportation processes, enabling them to save time, manpower, and money. The solution 

• Automatically collates requests through a smart-phone based app or employer bulk upload, eliminating the work of taking request through phone, email, Viber or WhatsApp
• Groups passengers, calculates the most efficient routes, assigns vehicles, and sends the routes to driver apps in seconds, eliminating the need to plan routes manually
• Automatically generates full passenger manifests, including boarding and alighting time stamps, to satisfy Department of Transportation (DOTr) requirements on record-keeping and enabling instant contact tracing without any input from drivers
• Allows passengers to track vehicles in real time, eliminating the need for transportation coordinators to chase down drivers
  

SWAT automates 90% of the manual work required to manage corporate shuttle fleets.  Its highly-efficient routing algorithms typically generate fleet cost savings of 20-30%.

“COVID-19 has accelerated the need to provide safe and efficient transport for essential on-site employees.  With the current economic challenges, companies need to provide this transport as efficiently as possible,”

said Nicholas Stipp, Chief Revenue Officer at SWAT. “SWAT Mobility is happy to help organizations in the Philippines digitize their employee transportation processes while simultaneously contributing to the alleviation of traffic in Metro Manila.”

Getting Employees Home Safely & Efficiently

SWAT’s first project in the Philippines, in cooperation with the Toyota Mobility Foundation, was launched in May.  SWAT enabled critical medical workers from Philippine General Hospital (PGH) to safely travel to and from their homes on door-to-door services as part of the DOTr’s Free Ride for Health Workers Program.  Workers used the SWATBiz app to book rides daily according to their shift schedule, were assigned to one of ten vans, and were routed efficiently to their homes.

In July, SWAT provided its SWATBiz app to coworking and staff leasing service provider KMC Solutions to help their employees and clients to book rides, plan routes in minutes, navigate drivers to close-to-home pick-up points, and track vehicles in real-time. Like the PGH project, this solution was delivered locally by SWAT’s partner Toyota Motor Philippines.

“SWAT’s technology has allowed our employees that manage transport to rest on nights and weekends and focus on their work.  It’s reduced the work required versus our previous manual process that had employees waiting for hours for vans and arriving very late.”

said Alex Gomez, Vice President for people and culture at KMC.  The app has been rated 4.7/5 by KMC users.

SWAT is working with many other organisations to help more Filipinos commute soundly in the metro and beyond. With Metro Manila being known to have one of the worst traffic congestions in the entire world, it’s now more important than ever to enable smart mobility solutions for all, saving organizations time through the automation of dispatching as well as improved fleet efficiency.  

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About SWAT Mobility

SWAT Mobility (SWAT) is a Singapore-based smart mobility solution firm that provides demand-responsive and ride-sharing technology in high capacity vehicles. With the belief that efficient transport is a fundamental right, SWAT endeavours to use its core mobility engine to improve the way people commute, ease congestion and improve their quality of life. 

Founded in 2016, SWAT has completed over a million dynamically-routed rides worldwide for commuters. The firm’s solutions are used by clients across Asia Pacific, including Sumitomo Corporation, Toyota Corporation, Transportation for New South Wales and Sembcorp Marine. Since its inception, the firm has garnered more than US$12 million in funding from investors such as the ComfortDelGro Ventures, Goldbell Group, iGlobe Partners, Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) Investments, EDB New Ventures, SMRT Momentum Ventures and the University of Tokyo Edge Capital (UTEC).

The company is headquartered in Singapore, with operations across seven markets including Australia, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.