MV Transportation, Inc. is the largest privately owned passenger transportation contracting services firm in North America, serving more than 110 million passengers each year across the United States and Canada. With a team of nearly 20,000 transit professionals, MV provides paratransit, fixed-route bus, public and private shuttle, and student transportation for more than 200 customers. MV has been on a quest to transform as many paper-based processes as possible, and Power Platform has been a key driver for multiple digitization projects.
It’s early morning and a driver for MV Transportation has just arrived at the company’s Las Vegas location to get a vehicle and route number assignment. The company has put multiple COVID protocols in place, but the local manager sees room for improvement. When going through the daily check-in, drivers all meet in one area, which makes social distancing difficult.
Around the same time, the company starts exploring Power Platform to streamline internal processes. The problem at the Las Vegas site sparks an idea: instead of just modifying the small dispatch area used for check-in, why not update the entire process—and move it online using a Power Platform solution? The result was a new process the company calls Contactless Dispatch. Now, drivers can check in with dispatch using a mobile app built using Power Apps. The solution was later expanded into a comprehensive Driver App, which digitized multiple, paper- and Excel-based processes. “Once we had digitized one process using Power Platform, we saw how easy it was to expand the solution and automate related workstreams,” says Stephanie Doughty, Vice President of Professional Services at MV. “The Driver App that we built using Power Platform has enabled us to streamline processes, reduce paper, and improve the entire driver experience.” A close-up look at the Driver App The Driver App was developed by MV, along with partner Slalom Consulting, using both Power Platform and other natively supported Microsoft technologies. The solution is also integrated with several third-party systems, including the company’s workforce management (WFM) system. Here’s how the core Contactless Dispatch component of the app works (see following schema): 1. Drivers use the camera on a mobile device to capture pictures of driver’s license and medical card. 2. Driver requests land in a channel on Microsoft Teams. This enables dispatchers to review all incoming requests and select requests not yet processed. It also helps organize requests into existing Teams channels based on division. 3. Each request in Teams includes a dynamic link. Clicking on the link opens the request in Power Apps where the dispatcher can send the route and vehicle number to the driver. This response is also logged back in a Teams channel for reference.
The Driver App solution features integration with Teams and the company’s WFM system.
This initial solution was expanded so drivers can use the same app in Power Apps for timesheet reviews, time-off requests, incident reporting, and more. For timesheet reviews, data from the company’s WFM system is uploaded automatically to Dataverse. Time-off requests and incident reporting are routed to other apps for review and processing. Power BI dashboards enable managers to monitor user activity in real time.
Together, all of these features took about seven months to develop—a fraction of the time compared to a traditional development process. “We estimate that we were able to build the Driver App solution four times faster using Power Platform vs. traditional code,” says Anthony Priest, Principal Consultant at Slalom Consulting. As he explains it, each feature that was built into the Driver App would need to have been its own app if built with traditional code—a process that could have taken years.
And the work on the Driver App continues.
While drivers can check in via the Driver App for vehicle and route requests, they still have to clock in onsite. Power Platform will soon change that. A new function will automatically send the time that a driver checks in to the driver’s timesheet in the company’s WFM system. (Azure Data Factory performs the necessary processing and required conversion to CSV file). This will eliminate the need for drivers to enter their time manually.
Supporting frontline adoption
Along with a highly efficient development process, an effective change management program was equally important to the success of the Driver App.
This started with union approval. Many drivers within the MV network are unionized, including those at the Las Vegas location where the Driver App was first piloted. To gain union approval for the new system, MV worked closely with union stewards during this pilot.
As stewards worked through hands-on training, they also provided valuable feedback that helped improve the prototype. This included an auto-purge function that removes drivers’ license and medical card information once a driver request has been processed to maintain driver privacy. Additionally, a geofencing function was added to ensure drivers check in only when they are close to a vehicle site. This helps ensure consistency between the time they check in and when they actually start work. Both functions were added using native capabilities in Power Platform.
Once the solution had union approval, it was rolled out to the broader driver network through a series of pilots, starting with the Las Vegas location. This was where all the development work and prototyping really paid off. As Doughty explains, “Our frontline workers are focused on driving, not technology. They needed a simple, easy-to-use app that didn’t require extensive training. Power Platform enabled us to design an app that met that need,” says Doughty.
Feedback from drivers was extremely positive and adoption was quick with minimal ramp-up issues. Within months, the Driver App was in use by hundreds of drivers at multiple locations in the MV network.
A simple, easy-to-use UI for the Driver App helped drive quick adoption while offering multiple driver services. The app was built for mobile, tablet, and kiosk devices.
Extending Power Platform innovation
While MV was working with Slalom Consulting on the Driver App, a small team of developers within MV was developing its own Power Platform applications. This was especially significant, as the company had previously sidelined internal application development. Running a traditional development team at MV had proven too costly, especially since it was not the company’s core business. “Power Platform has enabled us to streamline systems at a cost and speed that was simply not possible with traditional code,” says Rupert Hepworth, Vice President of Product Development. This work included a system that set out to digitize one of the company’s complex and costly support processes: claims processing. Previously, in order to file a claim, a claims manager at MV would complete a complex, paper-based form comprising hundreds of data fields. The manager would then have to call an agent at the company’s claims provider to review the claim and manually send the form to the provider. A new solution built using Power Platform now automates much of this process. To accommodate the complexity of the form, the initial version was digitized using Microsoft Forms. (A Power Apps version of the form is planned for the future.) Once the form is submitted, Power Automate triggers delivery to the claims provider, including conversion to the XML format required by the provider’s system. This new process has not only streamlined the forms handling process; it has eliminated calls to the provider and related service charges. This has resulted in enormous cost savings for MV. “By automating our claims process with Power Automate, we are able to cut our claims submission costs by almost 80%,” says Hepworth.
The Claims Processing solution automates delivery of claims forms to a third-party insurance provider. Conversion of forms to XML files enables integration with the provider’s system.
Hepworth and his team are also working on another reporting solution that will integrate with the Driver App. Built using Power Apps, the Safety Incident Reporting app will replace a paper-based process used by safety managers to report incidents such as vehicle accidents. The app includes pen input control that allows the driver to pinpoint damage directly on a diagram in the app. Drivers and other staff can also use a pen to sign the report before submitting. With integration to Power BI, the app will provide consolidated telemetry on incident reports—valuable data that was simply not available with paper reporting. As Hepworth explains, “One of the most expensive issues in our industry are vehicle accidents. The data that we’ll get back with our new Power Platform solution will help us better understand accident trends and come up with more preventative solutions.”
The Safety Reporting app replaced a complex paper-based form using Power Apps. Pen input controls (right) enable users to add damage details directly to a diagram in the app.
One Power Platform win leads to another
Given the success that MV has had already with just a few Power Platform solutions, developers such as Hepworth are excited about the future. He sees his small team of three Power Platform developers set to grow. “The more time and money we save through our current Power Platform solutions, the more we can expand our development resources and digitize other processes,” says Hepworth.
The CoE will also make it easier for citizen developers to start building their own apps, which should fuel even more innovative ideas to streamline business processes.
In the meantime, Hepworth and team continue to whiteboard more innovative ideas, including new Power Platform tools to digitize employee training—even tools to validate operational data and detect errors in other software systems. “Power Platform is enabling us to digitize and automate an amazingly wide range of business processes across the company,” says Hepworth
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