iTRAK

The client, A&M Specialists, is one of the largest press fleet management company in the US with 14 branches spread across the country. They had come to a stage where they realised that IT enabling their operations would be the only route to scaling up their business. They also believed that giving value added services to their clients and increasing their service efficiency would give them an edge over their competitors since their business depended heavily on their close relationships with their clients.

They already had in place a software system with a localised database in each branch. It had become inefficient and difficult for them to control their business without sharing the information stored between branches.

The challenge

• Porting their existing data onto a centralised database, preventing duplication of data records.
• Giving restricted yet informative views of the same database to their car manufacturer clients, the journalists reviewing the fleet and their own employees in different departments.
• Automating the operations in the various departments.

The solution

iTRAK is a web-based fleet management application designed and developed using a three tier architecture. We used Apache as the webserver, Jonas as the EJB server and Oracle as the RDBMS.

Benefits of iTRAK

•      Controlled monitoring of the business by top management
•      Faster and up-to-date access to information
•      Integration of geographically separated business centres
•      Non-replication of data
•      Increased transparency in reporting and billing
•      Enhanced streamlining and ease in scheduling for internal and external users
•      Security
•      Allowing client access to their vehicles' status real-time
•      Allowing journalist access to their schedules

• Online fleet tracking & scheduling With iTRAK, the status of a vehicle at any point in time,  present or past is known and future schedules can be planned.

• Multi-location and multi-user access iTRAK enables access of information using the internet thus providing easy access to data anywhere in the world. Users of iTRAK can be both company   employees and its business associates.

• Semi-automatic billing Billing for a fleet management system is from two sources. Activities  performed by the vehicles and from the storage that is charged when a vehicle is idle. iTRAK's billing module automatically calculates the expenses for both, activities and storage as per  conditions in a client's contract. It also allows for entry of other additional information like quantity  of fuel spent, tolls and towing charges paid and then calculates the expenses based on conditions in  the contract.

• Comprehensive reports iTRAK provides reports based on fleet movement for the day at any given location. It also provides information of inventory, cost incurred per user, mileage reports for   vehicles.

• Secured data access It provides a two fold access security through
• Usage of a 3 tier architecture
• Restriction of access by creation of user groups

Types of user group restriction

• Access to only data that is relevant to the user A client can access and manipulate only his vehicles and their activities and will not be able to access data of any other client.

• Perform only certain actions A Client car manufacturers user can perform activities like viewing the expenses, adding details about media persons while a Journalist cannot do any of these activities. A superuser can add and manipulate data for contracts, add new clients to the system while a normal user who is an employee does not have these options.