Transport Switzerland

Developing an application that eased the everyday work of bus drivers across Denmark

Executive Summary

Challenge: Trapeze Group Europe faced the challenge of developing a mobile app to simplify the daily work of bus drivers for a leading public bus and rail transport operator.

Approach: We helped in specifying the requirements and provided an expert level of skills to work out the details and suggest innovative solutions and enhancements, like automating SOAP requests and utilising RXJAVA.  

Result: Successful development and implementation of Crew App+, improving the efficiency of bus drivers’ day-to-day work. Positive feedback was received from both Trapeze Group Europe and their end clients. 

Table of Contents

About the client

Trapeze Group Europe provides intelligent transport systems and software solutions for the public transport sector.

Trapeze Group Europe’s products and comprehensive solutions support both public and private transport companies from the back office, through to the bus or train driver’s seat, assisting with planning and operations management, via control systems, passenger information solutions, fare management and corporate management tools.

Trapeze Group, the mother company of Trapeze Group Europe, is an international transport software company. As a subsidiary of Volaris Group, Trapeze Group has clients across Europe, North America and the Asia Pacific, providing its solutions to public and private transport organisations and authorities.

Business challenge

Trapeze Group Europe was approached by one of their long-standing clients, a leading public bus and rail transport operator, with the task of building an app that would ease the everyday work of their drivers.

The main challenge that Trapeze was facing was lack of internal resources to cope with the task, which is why they approached Future Processing.

The project has had two primary goals – first of all, to be involved more with our end client and second of all to have an ‘add on product’ to our main product line. Both have been a success.

Erik Futtrup
Director of Development, Trapeze Group Europe

Scope of work

Future Processing’s task was to develop an app extension to Trapeze’s Android project Crew App launched in 2010, a product of our earlier collaboration with Trapeze Group Europe.

We chose Future Processing because we have had a very good history with them, as they have already developed a stable product previously, with hardly any errors. Deciding on who will do the new development on this product, it was very relevant to us that it would be done by Future Processing.

The alternative for us was to do the app ourselves and build up the expertise within the company – we did not have time for this, therefore we decided to concentrate on the domain that we know very well and at the backend web services and outsource the development to Future Processing.

Erik Futtrup
Director of Development, Trapeze Group Europe

Our role

Having worked together previously to develop the original app, resuming that relationship seemed an obvious choice in moving the project forward with a view of implementing new functionalities and tailoring these to the existing system of Trapeze’s end client.

The main focus of the recent development of Crew App Android Extensions, or Crew App+, as it is named, was to make day-to-day work easier and more efficient for bus drivers, who can use the app on their mobile devices during their shifts.

Although Trapeze Group Europe came to us with an idea, we helped in specifying the requirements.

New functionalities that we added to the existing Crew App Android application include easy access to shift schedule, receiving push messages, requesting holidays and time-off, reporting overtime, reporting incidents or problems with the bus, reporting delays, uploading pictures with an option to describe them, e.g. to show damages on the bus.

What we like most is the quality of development and well-tested product. Apart from that we always get good advice on implementation and design of the product. The stable management of a team leader at Future Processing’s side is very important to us as well.

Future Processing provided us with an expert level of skills across the project and was proactive in working out the details and suggesting innovative solutions and enhancements. Our collaboration has been very good.

Erik Futtrup
Director of Development, Trapeze Group Europe

Main benefits of our partnership

We are particularly proud of this project because of its range – we were responsible for implementing and adjusting the solution used by bus drivers across Denmark – thereby reducing the burden on Trapeze Group Europe from an internal resource perspective.

The goal of the project was successfully accomplished. Bus drivers use the application written by us and Trapeze Group Europe and it has improved their work efficiency.

Future Processing has provided the resources necessary to complete the work on time and on budget and made it possible for us to meet our obligations towards our end client. Moreover, the project was delivered at a considerably lower cost than estimated for in-house or on-shore development. The previous version of Crew App is a most sought add-on module to our existing duty suite and was a very good base for adding new Crew App+ functionalities.

The new features are very much aligned with requirements from our other clients, so we tried to make design decisions together with Future Processing that both suited our end client and the general market. The response we got from our client’s bus drivers has been great, and many say that it makes their day to day work much easier.

Erik Futtrup
Director of Development, Trapeze Group Europe

Positive feedback came from Trapeze Group Europe’s end clients after the application went live. Knowing that not only Trapeze Group Europe but also their stakeholders are pleased with the effects of our collaboration makes us extremely happy that we were able to help our client successfully solve their IT problem.

Beyond software development

To make our daily work easier, we decided to introduce an innovative solution and automate one of the most painstaking Android jobs – the implementation of SOAP requests based on WSDL.

The innovation was based on finding and adapting to the custom WSDL. To generate the classes that suited the contract described in WSDL we used the Wsdl2Code tool. These tools, apart from Wsdl2Code, were developed by our Technical Advisor and helped us speed up the implementation process.

Another innovative thing we did was introducing RXJAVA – the concept of responsive functional programming.

Technology used in the project