New system will bring AA racing to rescue

By ADAM GIFFORD

Stranded motorists can expect a faster rescue from the Automobile Association emergency breakdown service thanks to a new nationwide real-time response system built by Mobile data specialist Econz.

AA national road service manager David Van Kampen said the new Card (Computer Aided Response and Dispatch) system went live last week, replacing an 11-year-old system, also designed by Econz.

He said the introduction of a new battery scheme last year, which resulted in a fivefold increase in the number of members seeking replacement batteries, was the final straw for the old system.

"It was getting slower and running out of capacity so it kept crashing, and it didn't have the flexibility to allow us to provide the modern services members expect," Mr Van Kampen said.

The new system has taken most of the year and "a couple of million dollars" to develop.

"As well as more capacity and speed, we have more business flexibility and functionality, and we will be able to add new services.

"We are also introducing smart features to dispatch jobs semi-automatically, which incorporates relatively sophisticated mapping data from Terralink [now New Zealand Aerial Mapping], similar to that used by emergency services."

The AA hopes the system will give a 2 or 3 per cent improvement in its response rates, so that more than two-thirds of jobs are reached within 30 minutes and 95 per cent within an hour.

"That may seem a relatively small increase on paper, but we are handling over 1300 jobs a day, or 460,000 breakdowns a year."

The AA has close to 920,000 members and is growing at about 4 per cent a year.

Econz project manager Richard Burgess said the system was similar to work done for the Royal Automobile Club of Queensland, but had significant differences to take account of different business processes and membership systems.

"The AA wanted a system which integrated with its old mobile data system, because it doesn't intend to upgrade that until later," he said.

Communication with service vehicles is by phone or with the Fleetlink trunk radio network, with terminals in the service vehicles.

"We just made gateway modules, so it will be little problem doing the upgrade."

That system uses an Oracle database and is built around the Econz Central Message Queue (MsgQ) software, which processes incoming information and redirects it as required, whatever the protocol used by the source or sender.

Mr Burgess said enhancements to the automatic dispatch process would also be introduced to the Queensland site.

The use of mobile data has brought a 98 per cent reduction in the use of voice communications. AA call centres in Penrose and Christchurch have been further transformed by Interactive Voice Response facilities, which allow contractors without mobile data terminals to log details of completed jobs by phone.