Trent Barton is an operator who takes pride in its achievements. Since 1999 Trent Barton has won the “Bus Operator of the Year” 3 times and been runner up twice.

A part of this is attributed to their forward thinking attitude towards technology. With a modern fleet, Trent Barton has used a real time Depot Allocation System for some time. “We started off with the text based Traffic Office System from Excel Solutions in 2001, and have now had the DAS system for 6 years”, says Simon Craggs of Trent Barton. When Omnibus bought the product from Excel, the company transferred to Omnibus’ books. “We always had a good working relationship with Excel, and the takeover by Omnibus built on that further - the support from Omnibus and their experience within the bus industry has been excellent.”

Trent Barton runs over 330 buses in Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, and employs over 1000 people - including 800 drivers. “We use the DAS (Depot Allocation System) for planning and tracking our bus routes, drivers, driver duties and buses.” Simon continued, “Using the system, with direct input from our scheduling system, we eliminate duplication in data entry. We use the DAS reporting module for numerous management reports, including daily exception reporting for our staff and vehicle allocation exceptions.

None of this could be done manually, within the allotted tight timescales to pay the drivers on a weekly basis.

As a modern bus company, we find the whole system very useful. We need instant access to all our driver, bus and duty information - for making last minute adjustments if a driver has to go home sick, or a bus breaks down.”

With the introduction of DAS Payrules in 2007, Trent Barton saw an opportunity to build on the information the system gave them; “Omnibus were creating a new module for calculating pay. We took great interest as it had the potential to automate a lot of manual tasks.

We managed to incorporate a lot of tasks to do with makeup and holidays, as well as having reports generated by the system instead of a separate link. We have never looked back since, as the system now takes half the time to generate the files required to import into our payroll server.”

As with all day to day technology, it’s not just about the software itself, but the support that comes with it. Trent Barton requires prompt support to run alongside the real-time operations. “The customer support has been great for us, from both continuing support of day to day matters right through to development of software and updates.

It gives us peace of mind that we have such a good team behind the DAS system, confident in the fact that any problems will get resolved quickly. The team at Omnibus are very friendly and helpful every time we call.”