Putting Our Customers’ Needs First
…through Leadership and Innovation!

That’s why we’re a little bit more
than just your average transportation company.

Historically the Taxi industry around the world was very archaic in the way we all ran our business. Trip information was written down on a piece of paper by a call taker and passed across a desk to a Dispatcher.

The Dispatcher called out the closest intersection of the trip over the radio and the Drivers who were close to the intersection were to call back and say where they were. Of course they always told the truth. (Ok, were supposed to tell the truth) The Dispatcher who had to know the city like the back of their hand would decide who was closest and give out the trip.

This process was fraught with human errors.

  • the customer gave us an incorrect address
  • forgot to tell us we need an apartment number
  • the call taker wrote a number down improperly
  • the dispatcher misread the information to the driver, or
  • the driver didn’t hear or write down the address properly

This all leads to a somewhat controlled chaos especially during peak hours where a Taxi company can take hundreds and in some case thousands of calls per hour. A customer would call back and say “I called for a taxi 15 minutes ago, can you tell me where it is”, then would be put on hold for long periods of time before the call taker could sort through slips of paper trying to find out the status of your trips.

A Taxi Company is like any other business, it needs information to grow and market it's business. Companies had no idea who their good customers were, where they were going, how good or bad their service levels were or how good their staff was. There was just nothing to look at except thousands of disorganized pieces of paper.

So in 1993, Burlington Taxi initiated the design of a computerized reservation and dispatch system to better serve its customers. The goal of the system was to automate as much as possible the call taking and dispatching processes, thus eliminating the human error that continued to be our biggest problem in best servicing our customers.

We were introduced to a Company called Cantech Associates who were a leader in fuzzy logic and nuclear technology. After investigating the market and seeing its potential, Burlington Taxi and Cantech created a new business group (Cantech International Inc.) that dealt specifically with transportation logistics technology. As founding partner Scott Wallace President of Burlington Taxi became Vice President in charge of Business Development and Sales. In 2001, Scott later became President and CEO.

The Technology

The first versions of the program helped solve some of our fundamental problems and was called Cantech XDS. We used Mapping and telephony technology in the system that allowed us to immediately identify who the customer was and where they were located. With this technology the call taker only had to pick up the phone and before they could say “Good Morning Burlington Taxi” all of the customer’s information would appear on the computer screen.

The information would include:

  • customers name
  • address (with apartment number if necessary)
  • history of their calls
  • account information if required

Once the call taker had all of the information of the customer they would just save the information and it would immediately go to the dispatcher's screen. The dispatcher could be assured that the information was accurate and, with out the stress of having to deal with the paper work, could offer trips to drivers more efficiently.

Having this information quickly at our fingertips allows us to not only eliminate the previous error-prone system but to take calls in less than 18 seconds on average compared to the 55 seconds in the paper method.

Realizing we were on the right track with a system that had international potential, we looked to three of Ontario’s leading taxi companies to further assist us with ideas on how the system would handle a greater diversity of companies.

These companies (Blue Line Taxi – Hamilton; Blue and White Taxi – Mississauga; Beck Taxi – Toronto) were an intricate part of the development of the system that allowed us to enhance the product to the point that it became easily accepted by new companies.

Always Moving Forward

The next missing piece to the puzzle was in best utilizing our assets (vehicles on the road) and getting the trips out to the drivers faster and ensuring that the 'closest vehicle' to the customer was actually the closest.

We then integrated in-vehicle computers (Mobile Data Terminals) and Global Positioning Systems with the XDS system to fully automate the call taking and dispatching process.

Now that we knew the exact location of the customer by using the mapping and Caller ID program the system could match the true closest vehicle to the customer. With the GPS technology the system knows exactly where the driver is at all times and we no longer have to rely on the driver.

The system now automatically assigns the closest driver to the location without human intervention. The end result is customers get service much faster. Additionally, using the Mobile Data Terminals the drivers receive all the appropriate trip information from the in-vehicle computer, thus eliminating any human errors.

This system, developed by Burlington Taxi, has now become the most accepted taxi dispatch system in the world. The system is in use in North and South America, the United Kingdom and in the Middle East.

And We are Always
Looking for New Ways
to Work Smarter & More Efficiently
in the Future!
www.burlingtontaxi.com