Introduction to Bid Taxi
Discuss about the IT Management Issue for Operational Research Society.
A new Taxi Service called Bid Taxi is introduced in order to improve the ride sharing services. In order to avail a Bid Taxi, a passenger or the customer will have to share some basic details including the pickup point, destination, number of passengers and the time for pick up. Based on the data provided by the customers, the taxi drivers bid for providing the service. The customer has the independence to choose the services with the lowest bid. Once the chosen, the selected bid or price is locked and the customer is provided with the service. The customer needs to pay for the services availed at the end of the journey and the entire journey will be tracked using the Global Positioning system. The payment will be made to the driver provider at the end of the journey (Agussurja & Lau, 2012). In order to validate this project, the organization has identified certain business goals and the business operations are designed according to the identified goals (Wang, Ng & Chen, 2012). The report discusses the business operation of Bid Taxi and provides certain recommendations to improve the business operation.
With an aim of providing a cost effective, easy to book and hassle free Taxi services to the passengers, Bid Taxi is proposed. The business operation of the Bid taxi has been designed in such a way that it remains well aligned with the identified goal of Bid Taxi. The business operations of the Bid Taxi services are as follows-
- The services of Bid taxi are designed in such a way that it would take maximum of ten minutes to book a taxi. The bidding time is 10 minutes and therefore it should not take any extra time after that in booking for the service as the customer will be responsible for choosing the service with the most suitable bid (Inquiry, 2012).
- Bid Taxi takes into consideration only the certified and the licensed drivers in their services. Moreover, the vehicles will be thoroughly checked before it is considered to be adequate in providing services to the customers. This will in turn increase the customers’ satisfaction as they will feel safe in boarding a Bid taxi as the vehicles will undergo a thorough check before deployment.
- One of the Major advantages of availing the Bid taxi services is the use of the Smartphone application in booking for the Taxi service. Since majority of the people now a day make use of Smartphone, it will be easier for them to book a taxi service using that (Lucas & Lau, 2012). Even if a customer does not have an access to the Smartphone or the Bid taxi mobile application, for example tourists, can make use of the official website for booking for a Bid Taxi. This is therefore a very advanced and user friendly option of booking a Taxi and therefore, it is expected to target a large section of the passengers with this services.
- In order to provide a transparent service, a star rating system is proposed where both the customers and the drivers will be allowed to rate each other. The driver with an unsatisfactory rating can be sacked while a customer having an unsatisfactory rating can be charged more in their next ride (Lee & Wu, 2013). This star rating system will furthermore help Bid Taxi in improving their services according to the ratings of the customers.
- In order to attract and engage more customers with the services of Bid Taxi and to encourage the service loyalty, every customer who is availing a Bid taxi services will be offered certain status points. These status points can be used by the customers as discount in their next ride. Customer can offer the status point as tip to the driver. It can be donated to the charity as well. The concept of status point will improve the customers’ engagement with the Bid taxi services that is beneficial from a business point of view.
- With an aim of providing a hassle free service to the customer of Bid taxi, the company has provided easy payment options. The customer can pay for the services availed with the help of their credit and debit cards. Bid taxi will accept the Osko mode of payment, which is one of the mostly used payment options in this era. Customers can be purchase gift cards from supermarket as well (Pueboobpaphan, Indra-Payoong & Pueboobpaphan, 2018). This is one of the major advantages of Bid Taxi and more customers will be interested in engaging with the services since the payment options are sorted.
- Along with the loyalty scheme proposed for the customers, the driver providers are also rewarded for the services they will be providing. The driver providers will be rewarded with certain gift cards if they manage to offer services for a target period of time. These gift cards will mainly be discounted fuel gift cards which they can make use of while refilling the fuel in their vehicle. This is an intelligent business operation as more driver providers will like to engage with the Bid taxi service as they will be rewarded for the same (Seesan, Rungkasiri & Cooharojananone, 2012). Furthermore, the driver providers will be interested in providing good services to the customer with an aim of getting those gift cards. This will in turn help in providing a class services to the customers of Bid taxi. A satisfied customer is expected to engage with the services more than once, which is beneficial from the business point of view of the Bid taxi service.
The above points discuss the major business operation of Bid Taxi that can be forwarded to the Ministry of Public Transportation for their approval (Bai et al., 2014). The services can be improved with time by bringing certain changes in the existing operation of the company. Since the Bid Taxi aims at providing a cost effective taxi Services to the customers, it is expected to gain popularity in no time. Therefore, it is requested to the Ministry of Public Transportation in validating the services offered by Bid taxi. However, there are certain recommendations for improving the business operation of Bid taxi, which is discussed in the following section.
The recommendations for improving the business operation of Bid taxi are as follows-
- The Bid Taxi services can be extended for providing short distance tour services. This will enable the customers in availing a cost effective Taxi services for short distance rides as well. This will furthermore improve the business opportunity of the company as lot more tourists will be interested in availing the Bid Taxi services. This option can therefore provide an excellent business opportunity as well as enhanced services to the customers.
- The safety of the customers should be an important consideration as well. The vehicles should be thoroughly checked and infused with the safety requirements (Haque, Chin & Debnath, 2013). Furthermore, there should be an option where customers can report any discomfort or problems they might have faced in the entire journey. This will increase the customers’ trust with the service, which will in turn enhance the business opportunity of Bid Taxi.
- Another recommendation for improving the business operation of Bid taxi is to decrease the bidding time that is allotted to the driver providers before booking. Waiting ten minutes for a taxi might be not feasible with the customers who are in a hurry (Maciejewski, 2014). Reduction in the bidding time from ten minutes to five minutes will be beneficial to the customers who are in a hurry or during emergency. Consequently, an option of pre booking the taxi can be proposed as well, which will enable the customers in scheduling a taxi booking in advance. This might be subjected to an extra charge that will be levied on the customer (Wang, Cheu & Lee, 2014). The regular customers can makes use of the status points that they have gained from earlier journey in eliminating the extra charge of pre booking the taxi service.
The above discussed points are certain suggestions that can be considered by Bid taxi for improving the existing services of Bid taxi (Maciejewski, 2014). These recommendations are made keeping in mind the profit of the company and the advantage of the customers and therefore, these are highly recommended for the company.
Business Operations of Bid Taxi
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above discussion it can be concluded that the Bid Taxi service is capable of improving the ride sharing experiences. The report is directed to the Ministry of Public Transportation for validating the Bid Taxi service. The report gives an overview of the Business operation of Bid taxi and makes certain recommendations in improving the existing services of Bid taxi. The Bid Taxi services are proposed with aim of targeting the regular passengers as well as the tourist. Since Bid Taxi will provide a cost effective solution to the taxi booking services, it is expected to draw a large customer base. Therefore, it will be a great business opportunity for the Ministry of Public Transportation as well as the Company.
The Bid taxi services are proposed with an intention of providing a cost effective Taxi booking services to the tourists and the daily passengers. In order to provide an excellent customer service, Bid Taxi has identified certain business goals according to which the business operation is effectively designed. The services of Bid taxi can be further enhanced by bringing certain modifications in the services offered by the Bid Taxi. The recommendations for improving the business offerings of Bid taxi are as follows-
Since the Bid Taxi aims at providing safe, secure and comfortable journey to the passengers, it is recommended for the company to improve to provide drivers training. Training the drivers will make them more efficient in providing a comfortable ride to the customers. Furthermore, drivers are needed to be trained about the use of the Smartphone application, the rating system and the operation of different functionalities of the Smartphone application and the website of Bid Taxi. Furthermore, including trained drivers in the team will attract more customers in availing the Bid taxi services and therefore, it will be beneficial from the business perspective as well. In order to implement this training system, it might be made mandatory for the driver providers and the drivers to undergo a pre determined days of training. This training should be provided free of cost to encourage more drivers in undergoing a training before engaging with the Bid Taxi services. This might improve their job opportunities in future as well and therefore, it is expected that more drivers will be interested in participating in the training program.
Along with the rating system, a customer feedback system can be introduced as well. The feedback system will enable the customers in reviewing their journey, which can be further used in improving or modifying the business operations of Bid Taxi. A customer support system should be proposed as well which should be accessible 24*7 (Weng et al., 2017). The customer service will address the query of the customer related to the bidding, booking and the payment. This is necessary addition to the existing service as it will increase the customers’ satisfaction. Increase in customers’ satisfaction implies that more customers will be interested in engaging with the services offered by the Bid taxi as they will have a peace of mind that their queries will be resolved or looked into if required (Debnath et al., 2014). Furthermore, the customers’ feedback will be an excellent source of bringing new changes in the existing operation of Bid Taxi.
Recommendations for Improving Bid Taxi
Driver training and the customer feedback system are two suggestions that can be offered to the Bid Taxi service in order to enhance their business service operation. These two suggestions are mainly customer centric and are made in order to improve the business efficiency and business profit through greater customer satisfaction (Billhardt et al., 2015). Therefore, it is recommended for the company to implement these changes in their business operation.
References
Agussurja, L., & Lau, H. C. (2012). Toward large-scale agent guidance in an urban taxi service. arXiv preprint arXiv:1210.4849.
Bai, R., Li, J., Atkin, J. A., & Kendall, G. (2014). A novel approach to independent taxi scheduling problem based on stable matching. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 65(10), 1501-1510.
Billhardt, H., Fernández, A., Lujak, M., Ossowski, S., Julián, V., De Paz, J. F., & Hernández, J. Z. (2015). Towards smart open dynamic fleets. In Multi-Agent Systems and Agreement Technologies (pp. 410-424). Springer, Cham.
Chen, W. (2014). Technical improvements on mobile app based taxi dispatching system. In International Conference on Computer Science and Service System (pp. 281-284).
Debnath, A. K., Chin, H. C., Haque, M. M., & Yuen, B. (2014). A methodological framework for benchmarking smart transport cities. Cities, 37, 47-56.
Haque, M. M., Chin, H. C., & Debnath, A. K. (2013). Sustainable, safe, smart—three key elements of Singapore’s evolving transport policies. Transport Policy, 27, 20-31.
Inquiry, T. I. (2012). Customers first: service, safety, choice. Draft Report.
Lee, D. H., & Wu, X. (2013). Dispatching strategies for the taxi-customer searching problem in the booking taxi service. In Proceedings of the Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting.
LUCAS, A., & LAU, H. C. (2012). Toward large-scale agent guidance in an urban taxi service.
Maciejewski, M. (2014). Benchmarking minimum passenger waiting time in online taxi dispatching with exact offline optimization methods. Archives of Transport, 30.
Maciejewski, M. (2014). Online taxi dispatching via exact offline optimization. Logistyka, 3, 2133-2142.
Pueboobpaphan, S., Indra-Payoong, N., & Pueboobpaphan, R. (2018). Information Effect in Taxi Service Double Auction with Opportunity Cost: An Experimental Analysis. Engineering Journal (Eng. J.), 22(1), 77-91.
Seesan, R., Rungkasiri, T., & Cooharojananone, N. (2012). Taxi Friend: Innovation Application For Taxi Passenger.
Wang, C., Ng, W. K., & Chen, H. (2012, July). From data to knowledge to action: A taxi business intelligence system. In Information Fusion (FUSION), 2012 15th International Conference on (pp. 1623-1628). IEEE.
Wang, H., Cheu, R. L., & Lee, D. H. (2014). Intelligent taxi dispatch system for advance reservations. Journal of Public Transportation, 17(3), 8.
Weng, G. S., Zailani, S., Iranmanesh, M., & Hyun, S. S. (2017). Mobile taxi booking application service’s continuance usage intention by users. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 57, 207-216.
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