IN AND AROUND EDINBURGH...
...IT’S CITY CABS YOU’LL SEE FIRST
Whether it is the Cathedral, the castles, the historic houses, the famous annual Festival, the Mary Queen of Scots Trail... you name it, and you’ll see City Cabs there dropping off or picking up at any and all of these Edinburgh attractions.
City Cabs has its own history as well; the company has been offering a quality serv- ice since 1925, although it was incor- porated under its present name in 1958. In fact City Cabs (Edin- burgh) Ltd is a co-operative of licensed hackney car- riage proprietors, which currently num- ber 329 and are “growing at a rate”. So states City Cabs’ current Chairman George Aird, who with Company Secretary Les McVay mans the office during suitable hours Monday to Fri- day.
But they’re out there driving at the weekends, along with everyone else. All the member/shareholders are owner/drivers. George Aird and his current management committee has seen the fleet expand from 280 vehicles to today’s 329 over the last four years.
The company covers all of Edinburgh and surrounding areas, including the airport and the two railway stations. City Cabs joined together with Central Radio Taxis two years ago to make a successful tender for the contract at the air- port; they are pleased
to report that last Octo- ber the contract was renewed for another three years. This con- tract alone brings in some 490,000 pickups per year.
So how many jobs does City Cabs get per week? It’s difficult to calculate, says George Aird, because of the nature of the business being 100 per cent hackney. What he can tell us is that each vehi- cle on the fleet gets around 90 jobs per week per car through the call centre, but then they also take street pickups from the ranks. He also says that each driver is guaranteed to get eight or nine times’ their radio rent money back over a month.
BALANCING ACT
Basically George indi- cates that the company believes the balance between cash jobs and account work (75/25 per cent) is about right. But according to George Aird, what real- ly has improved the cash flow of the busi- ness has been the Cordic computerised booking and dispatch system, which City Cabs has had for around two and a half years.
City Cabs use most of Cordic’s product range, such as Interac- tive Voice Response (IVR), Web Booking, and remote booking terminals amongst oth- ers. They also use Cordic’s unique taximeter interface sys- tem. Once a fare is accepted, the taxime-
ter is switched on which turns off the top light and links to the in- car PDA via Bluetooth. Once the driver accepts a fare and turns on the meter, the office automatically knows the vehicle is engaged on a journey and no jobs are sent to that particular taxi. Drivers can also report where they are head- ing using their PDA for any automatic follow- on jobs. With ever-increasing corporate business being thrust upon the taxi industry, many companies are suffer-
documents are checked and ready to go out at the beginning of each month with minimum effort. As a result the firm has seen a six to seven week improvement in money coming in. According to George Aird, it has “changed the entire structure of the compa- ny. The cash flow used to be really bad, but now with the invoices being emailed out they are paid virtually imme- diately. I cannot stress enough how that has improved our busi- ness.”
The other aspect of the
lion, for future expan- sion plans.
The firm also put inter- nal company functions under the microscope: for example, the call centre was losing 30 per cent of their calls previously, but under their new call centre manageress this issue has been resolved. Similarly, their previous shift system was “all over the place”, but now they’ve installed time clocks, internal CCTV, and there are three teams on a shift system which is work- ing much more efficiently.
ing cash flow problems, which in turn hamper their chances of participat- ing in large contracts. To address this issue, City Cabs went paper- less over a year ago. Cordic’s system allows them to email all driver statements and invoic- es at the start of each month. It’s a huge time-saver and has cut costs on printing, envelopes and postage. Most impor- tantly for City Cabs, they’ve seen a radical improvement in their cash flow.
Cordic’s Account Package means that all
system is that going paperless is just one part of City Cabs’ envi- ronmental policy in which they strive to conduct their opera- tions in an environmentally sus- tainable manner.
PEOPLE WHO NEED PEOPLE
It has to be said that City Cabs has not lost their reliance on the HR aspect of the busi- ness... in plain old fashioned English, the people who keep things ticking over, which in this particular co-operative means everybody.
George
Aird explains that the current management has turned the busi- ness into a kind of ‘one-stop shop’ for all the members: they organise advertising on the cabs, which helps pay for the rent fees; they also have an agency for Westmin- ster Insurance. And last year they bought the entire block of buildings next to the call centre for £1.1mil-
PAGE 52
Employing a fully trained and dedicated workforce of control room staff, telephon- ists, accounts and administration, market- ing, customer relations and a Management Committee, means that
A CITY CABS (EDINBURGH) LTD Address: Telephone:
1a Atholl Place Edinburgh EH3 8HP 0131 228 1211
Website:
www.citycabs.co.uk Year firm started: 1925 Number of vehicles: 329
Types of vehicle: All hackney carriage: Conditions of Fitness vehicles, E7, Mercedes
Licensing Authority: Edinburgh City Council
Cost of -
Booking office licence:
£500
Driver’s licence: £156 Vehicle licence: c. £267 Radio rent fee:
Standard fares:
£390 per month incl. VAT
As per taxi tariff set by Edinburgh CC
Booking system: Computerised – Cordic
PHTM FEBRUARY 2010
they operate a highly professional and com- prehensive service 24/7/365. They have 30 telephone lines and the latest Cordic tech- nology that allow their control of staff to pro- vide a faster response time to customers. Because City Cabs is a co-operative, owned and operated by the members, this in turn means that each mem- ber is committed to the long term success of the business and to the City of Edinburgh. So there you have it: a bit of Edinburgh histo- ry that has always managed to update and remain forward looking. Under the current management, stand back and get out of the way: City Cabs (Edinburgh) Ltd is forg- ing ahead at a rate of knots!
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