We often think twice when we want to print an email to save paper and trees, but we should think a lot more in producing data for clients and customers. The production of this data, also called 'big data', costs companies many tens of thousands of euros.

The tender often contains a requirement for the supply of data to the clients or authorities, and since in many cases the execution of this tender is referred to subcontractors, the requirement to supply data is also passed on to the small taxi companies that are commissioned by transport directors. carry out the transport.

Calculating useless data costs many tens of thousands of euros.

There are many simple examples of the waste of money, but the most important is perhaps the obligation to indicate when a taxi is coming to the customer. This ETA as this time is known, better known as Estimated Time Arrival, is determined based on the location of the vehicle relative to the customer's home address. 

To be able to make this calculation, software packages such as Pitane Mobility make use of real-time traffic information and road navigation techniques. Based on these two basic elements, we can deliver a good ETA with certainty. After calculation, this data is sent via an 'external link' to the client, who then does nothing with it in 99,9% of the cases, except for storing it in his database.

This already sounds illogical, but when 30 cars from a taxi company are on the road for the same client, we do the same trick 30 times per minute because we receive a position update of the car every minute. It would have been better and cheaper to only send the position of the vehicle to the client and to have the client make this calculation in his software system in 0,1% of cases when the ETA is actually requested.

Costs are often underestimated, but Google and TomTom invoices speak for themselves

Do not underestimate the total costs of these calculations, apart from the cost of purchasing the real-time data, these calculations are often performed in data centers and we now know that these cloud servers are not free either.

In addition, there is also the 'sour' reality that many clients are not even able to process the data supplied in real time, because their own systems run into all kinds of limitations and the data flow per minute cannot even be processed, which leads to queues. Due to the creation of these queues in the processing of the data, the information and thus also the ETA is already outdated when it is stored in the database of the clients. 

Our advice is therefore urgently to check what the real-time data is used for and to minimize the costs at the transport companies. Considering where the calculation takes place and what the data are used for is perhaps the basis of a 'better' tender.

After all, everyone wants to earn something in the sector!

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