For more than three decades, it has been CCCi’s privilege and pleasure to help hundreds of clients achieve their business objectives through technology solutions. Here we present a small sample of our many client case studies; we encourage you to contact us to learn more about the breadth and depth of our success stories.

Previous manual process streamlined from over four hours to under one hour.

The Client

A public transit department providing transportation to support a Southeastern metropolitan county of nearly one million residents including buses, light rails and van pools. In addition, the department is preparing to expand with a regional rapid transit system to encompass a six-county area.

The Client’s Need

The public transit department had purchased 33 ticket vending machines, which resemble a miniature ATM, allowing patrons of the light rail service to pay for their fare with cash or a credit card. While the machines were well built, they did not come with a back-end system — a caveat the department knew and had planned for ahead of time. With the implementation of the machines, the department instituted a manual process for managing the replacement of the cash and coin boxes that collected a patron’s payment and provided change.

The process of determining which machines needed servicing was really an educated guess based on the traffic at the machine and ranged from every other day to once a month. Within three months of going live with the machines, the public transit department sought the development of an automated system that would allow them to determine which machines needed their cash and coin boxes replaced, and integration with its existing fare database.

The Solution CCCi Provided

CCCi, known for helping their clients accelerate IT deliverables, reduce costs and increase productivity, has been a prime vendor for the public transit department since 2001. During that time, CCCi has provided numerous consultants to support a variety of projects from budgeting and financial reporting systems to custom developed applications. In 2003, CCCi provided an experienced consultant with financial expertise to assist the public transit department in implementation of a new budgeting system. When the ticket vending machine application needed to be developed, they looked no further than to the CCCi consultant who had now been working with the department for more than five years on a variety of application development projects. The consultant along with two of his CCCi colleagues, who had also been working on other projects at the department, designed, developed, implemented, trained and documented a system that automatically provides the information needed to determine which machines needed their cash and coin boxes refreshed as well as to establish clear accountability for the cash and coin boxes at all times.

The CCCi consultants worked with key stakeholders in the finance department as well as end users of the system to be developed, to get a better understanding of the existing manual processes. In addition, they also worked with the stakeholder team to determine exactly what was needed to meet the current requirements for servicing the 33 ticket vending machines, but would also scale to meet the department’s future demands, particularly the impending regional transit expansion.

Upon approval of a scope of work document that clearly outlined the project to ensure everyone was in agreement of the end goal and the steps to achieving it, the CCCi consultant team quickly got to work with the code they needed to create the VB.NET application. End users were trained on the system, documentation to support the system was created, and a beta test was conducted to work out defects and usability enhancements. In approximately 12 weeks, the public transit department’s new application for monitoring its ticket vending machines was up and running.

The System Components

• Security
  A login screen with individual usernames and passwords provided controlled access to the program itself, role-based access and allowed the department to monitor who was taking what action for clear accountability.
  
  
• Checkout of Boxes
  Through the system, a department representative can generate a list that identifies the ticket vending machines that need the cash and coin box refreshed. A barcode system allows the representative to scan the cash or coin box that is going out to the machine that needs refreshing, so the department knows exactly which location it will be at and how much money it contains. When the boxes are turned over to the delivery service company, the barcode is used to note this c hange of hands. Likewise, when the boxes are placed in the machine, it is automatically updated in the database.
  
  
• Check-in of Boxes
  When the delivery company returns the cash and coin machine boxes to the public transit department, a representative scans the barcode and the system automatically knows which machine it came from, how much money was in it, and the change of custody — from the machine, to the delivery company, to the public department.
  
  

The Results the Client Achieved

The manual process for refreshing the cash and coin boxes in the 33 light rail ticket vending machines was taking over four hours a day, 365 days a year. It’s now estimated to take less than an hour a day saving the transit department approximately $38,000 a year in labor costs alone.

The public transit department has an application running with zero defects that automatically identifies the ticket vending machines that need refreshing. Through a barcode system it tracks the location of every cash and coin box, from the department’s vault, to the delivery driver, to the ticket vending machine, and even to the maintenance department, ensuring complete control and accountability and minimizing loss. In addition, the system integrates with the existing fare database which simplifies the periodic auditing process.

Not only has the application saved the public transit department money and freed up employees to work on other business critical activities, it has significantly reduced the opportunity for errors compared to the manual tracking process, provided clear tracking and accountability and thus greater security of the money going to and coming from the ticket vending machines, and is positioned for the department’s regional transit expansion.