Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. is hoping to fix some issues with its transportation services buy installing new software.
The school board voted Monday to approve a transportation routing software contract with Transfinder. The corporation is based in Schenectady, New York, and provides logistics software to schools, municipalities and adult care facilities.
“We had some issues with our current routing software when we started school up this past fall,” said Director of Transportation AJ McKeand. “At that point in time, we decided we were going to go shopping, for a lack of words, to see what was out there.”
BCSC experienced some transportation issues during its first day of school in August, with some parents complaining on social media they could not find route maps and schedules, and also had trouble reaching the transportation department. At the time, Director of Operations Brett Boezeman said they had been dealing with “vendor-related routing software challenges” over the summer.
Prior to voting on the contract with Transfinder, school board member Jason Major asked how much the new software will increase “efficiency and effectiveness.”
McKeand replied that Transfinder will merge three different departments and include Servicefinder for the maintenance shop and Tripfinder for field trips and extracurricular travel.
“There’s a dashboard,” he said. “… All of those pieces communicate together, and we can use that for data mining. If I sit at my desk, I can see what everything’s doing for today, and so can the person that’s three doors down the hall. Versus now we have three different software companies doing three different things, and we have to pull data three times individually and then compare that way.”
He added that BCSC will have access to Transfinder’s implementation team for a year. The team will provide training, re-evaluate current routes and look at potential improvements.
