ISBA

76 www.theisba.org.uk SPONSOR PROFILE Vectare’s philosophy is simple; if one school is asking for a feature, some of their other schools are likely to find it useful too. The success of their approach to service delivery is embodied in the simple fact that they have never lost a school; every single client school who they have worked with are still using their services to this day. School transport services are facing urgent challenges This year, Vectare is using their significantly expanded presence at the conference to showcase newly developed products and services to help schools address urgent challenges that are facing their school transport services. The passenger road transport sector is under extreme pressure. A decade of public sector spending cuts, alongside ever-increasing regulatory requirements, means that coach operators’ traditional revenue streams have reduced, but their cost bases have risen substantially. Operators have to navigate PSVAR (legislation mandating that school transport services operated by vehicles with 23+ seats are wheelchair accessible), ULEZ (a requirement for vehicles operating in Greater London to have expensive emission reduction equipment fitted) and increased congestion, which reduces vehicle utilisation. The coronavirus crisis, coupled with Brexit has also led to a nationwide shortage of coach drivers, which means that the market for coach transport is under pressure, with prices rising relatively rapidly. Dynamic approach to delivering transport For schools, many of whom already invest significant subsidies into their transport services, this presents a challenge. If coach hire costs increase, but transport revenues remain static, schools will be faced with having to invest ever-increasing sums into transport, in order to maintain network coverage and avoid losing students. Vectare wants to show schools that a more dynamic approach to delivering transport will achieve cost savings, revenue growth and pupil retention – all based on the principle that a successful bus or coach service needs to aggregate demand from a wide range of different people, all with different circumstances. Schools see pupil turnover of up to 20 percent every year, and so it is essential that they replan routes to reflect this. In order to facilitate this, Vectare’s system is designed to collect as much data about travel patterns and potential demand as possible, whilst, of course, remaining fully GDPR compliant. For example, when parents use the system to plan their child’s journey to school, the results of these searches are stored and mapped out, allowing clients to easily see where potential demand for their school transport services might be. Vectare also tracks daily passenger numbers on every route, creating invaluable data for determining what size of vehicle should be allocated to a route, and thus enabling efficient matching of supply and demand. Visit Vectare’s experts If your school currently offers a transport service, whether in house or subcontracted, or if you are considering introducing such a service, go and talk to Vectare at the conference. They deliberately don’t have a sales team, because they believe that experienced transport professionals should be responsible for their clients right from an initial enquiry through to successful project delivery. As such, their expert transport consultants, all with backgrounds in transport planning, business management and economics, will be staffing the stand and they’d love schools to take advantage of this by discussing their requirements with them in detail. www.vectare.co.uk