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Paragon has enhanced its routing and scheduling software with the introduction of resource management functionality to help fleet managers better manage utilisation of all available drivers.
The new functionality allows fleet operators to track drivers’ holidays, shift patterns and hours worked, automatically factoring all of this in to transport plans. With the driver shortage problem continuing to challenge transport operations, enhanced resource management is vital for fleets of all sizes.

Driver availability is just one of hundreds of parameters that a planner has to juggle when creating transport plans. Planners are under pressure to take account of individual driver preferences such as shift times, break times and overnight assignments, all the while aiming for maximum efficiency across the transport operation. The new resource management functionality from Paragon will allow fleet managers to:

• Manage holiday entitlement and approval to avoid too many drivers being away at the same time;
• Automatically generate advanced shift schedules to provide forward visibility and control;
• Comply with working time limits at an individual driver level;
• Track individual driver hours accumulated to avoid overtime.

Planners can now ensure delivery routes are efficient and make the best use of drivers and vehicles while factoring in drivers’ preferences. Furthermore, the planning process itself becomes more efficient. Planners can automatically allocate available drivers to a plan, removing the need for the transport office to spend time allocating drivers to routes. Total visibility of all drivers’ availability, captured in a single system that feeds in to the planning process, brings a reduction in planning time and eliminates the risk of human error. This represents a significant improvement over using paper-based or multiple software systems.

Building on the required skills functionality which is available as standard in Paragon’s routing and scheduling, fleet managers are also able to create their own list of driver skills such as qualified gas fitter or carpenter and the appropriate tools required for each job. Paragon’s routing software will then ensure that calls are only allocated to appropriately skilled drivers and that skilled resource is allocated appropriately.  

“Our new resource management functionality allows fleet managers and planners to do more with less. At Paragon, we invest about a third of our turnover in research and development every year helping customers develop a continuous improvement process that solves real-world, everyday transport problems,” said William Salter, Managing Director of Paragon Software Systems. “With resource management functionality, you gain peace of mind that you are achieving maximum efficiency from all your available assets, including drivers.”

Manufacturers will more than double Multicloud use in the next two years, a new report predicts.

Nutanix has announced the findings of its Enterprise Cloud Index results report for the manufacturing sector, measuring manufacturing companies’ plans for adopting private, public and hybrid clouds.
The report revealed that the manufacturing industry’s hybrid cloud usage and plans outpace the global average across industries. The deployment of hybrid clouds in manufacturing and production companies has currently reached 19% penetration, slightly ahead of the global average. Moreover, manufacturers plan to more than double their hybrid cloud deployments to 45% penetration in two years; outpacing the global average by 4 percent.

The manufacturing industry is at an “innovation impasse,” ¹ meaning manufacturers have a desire to innovate and drive transformation, but legacy IT systems have the potential to constrain their ability to do so. The opportunity for manufacturers to embrace digitization efforts including “Industry 4.0” initiatives can break the impasse, but executives must focus on new opportunities to create value and not only prioritize traditional business operations. Manufacturing organizations face the constant challenge of trade-offs: they are under pressure to meet current productivity and operational goals in an increasingly global and highly competitive marketplace, but they also need to invest in future growth.

This challenge has created a demand for new technology solutions that can help balance the trade-off between current and future goals. IT leaders in manufacturing must avoid the beaten path of finding short-term fixes for increasing revenue; instead, they should look to long-term solutions that enable automation, enhanced use of data and improvements in customer experience. The Enterprise Cloud Index findings indicate that manufacturing leaders are aggressively adopting new technology to embrace modernization instead of getting left behind with legacy systems. The distributed cloud model offers a solution that delivers speed, flexibility, and localization, allowing manufacturers to improve efficiency without compromising quality.

While 91% of survey respondents reported hybrid cloud as the ideal IT model, today’s global average hybrid cloud penetration level is at 18.5% — the disparity due in part to challenges of transitioning to the hybrid cloud model. Manufacturing industries reported barriers to adopting hybrid cloud that mirrored global roadblocks, including limitations in application mobility, data security/compliance, performance, management and a shortage of IT talent. Compared to other industries, manufacturers reported greater IT talent deficits in AI/ML, hybrid cloud, blockchain, and edge computing/IoT.

Other key findings of the report include:

• 43% of manufacturers surveyed are currently using a traditional data center as their primary IT infrastructure, slightly outpacing the global average of 41%;
• However, manufacturers currently use a single public cloud service more often than any other industry. 20% of manufacturing companies reported using a single cloud service, compared to the global average of 12% — a testament to the fact that manufacturers are starting to turn to the cloud as a solution, given that they deal with legacy IT systems and cannot handle workloads on-prem;
• Manufacturers are also advancing the movement to private cloud: 56% of manufacturers surveyed said that they run enterprise applications in a private cloud, outpacing the global average by 7%;
• Manufacturers are struggling to control cloud spend. One motivation for deploying hybrid clouds is enterprises’ need to gain control over their IT spend. Organizations that use public cloud spend 26% of their annual IT budget on public cloud, with this percentage predicted to increase to 35% in two years’ time. Most notable, however, is that more than a third (36%) of organizations using public clouds said their spending has exceeded their budgets;
• Manufacturers chose security and compliance slightly more often than companies in other industries as the top factor in deciding where to run workloads: while 31% of respondents across all industries and geographies named security and compliance as the number one decision criterion, 34% of manufacturing organizations chose security and compliance as the top factor.

The bullish outlook for hybrid cloud adoption globally and across industries is reflective of an IT landscape growing increasingly automated and flexible enough that enterprises have the choice to buy, build, or rent their IT infrastructure resources based on fast transforming application requirements.

“Manufacturers are investing in modernizing their IT stack, and adopting industry 4.0 solutions to keep up with ever-changing business demands in areas like production and supply chain management,” said Chris Kozup, SVP of Global Marketing at Nutanix. “A hybrid cloud infrastructure gives manufacturers a fresh approach to modernizing legacy applications and services, enabling manufacturing IT leaders to focus on their long-term investments in big data, IoT, and next-generation enterprise applications. While the manufacturing industry is still facing obstacles in transitioning to multi-cloud use, this study shows us that manufacturing organizations are ready to accelerate growth and take the lead in IT innovation in the future.”

To create this report, Nutanix commissioned Vanson Bourne to survey more than 2,300 IT decision makers, including 337 worldwide manufacturing and production organizations, about where they are running their business applications today, where they plan to run them in the future, what their cloud challenges are and how their cloud initiatives stack up against other IT projects and priorities. The survey included respondents from multiple industries, business sizes and geographies in the Americas; Europe, the Middle East, Africa (EMEA); and Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) regions.

¹ IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Operations Technology 2018 Predictions, doc #US42126317, October 2017

HSO Partner of the Year Finalist in Retail, Field Service and Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations categories.
Each year, Microsoft presents the Partner of the Year Awards to partners who have delivered exceptional performance in terms of innovation and customer success. Out of 2,900 plus entries from 115 countries, HSO’s entries in the Retail, Field Service and Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations categories were recognised as finalists.
An outline of HSO's work in achieving the multiple nominations are below:




Field Service: Data-driven working based on IoT and predictive maintenance BAM Building & Construction, the largest construction company in the Netherlands, won the contract for maintenance of the existing infrastructure at Schiphol Airport in 2018. In order to optimise and streamline the maintenance of more than 17,000 assets at the Schiphol terminals, HSO implemented Microsoft Field Service at BAM, which enables data-driven working based on IoT technology and predictive maintenance.

Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations: Standardising processes and eliminating customization with Process Mining HSO is the largest Dynamics 365 F&O Partner worldwide, with a growth of 250% in Dynamics 365 cloud software between 2016 and 2018. The HSO entry highlighted the added value of using advanced modelling tools when implementing or upgrading an ERP solution, in order to make Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations projects as efficient as possible. This way HSO ensures best practice implementations and minimises customisation.

Retail: Retailers make the transition to a future-proof cloud platform For 27 years, HSO have been helping retail organisations with process optimisation and transformation. Over the past year, the complete cloud migration of Godiva; the supply chain, Azure and Power BI solution for Rituals; and the retail implementation for fashion chain Joules, stood out particularly in this sector. Thanks to these striking and innovative customer cases, HSO became a finalist in the Retail category.
Commenting on the achievement, Eric Veldkamp, International Marketing Director HSO said: “We are thrilled by this major achievement. To become a finalist in no less than three categories is a great recognition of the commitment and efforts of our dedicated employees and successful collaboration with our customers.


“It’s an honor to recognize finalists and winners of the Microsoft 2019 Partner of the Year Awards,” said Gavriella Schuster, Corporate Vice President, One Commercial Partner, Microsoft Corp. “These companies are successfully leading their industries, building intelligent solutions, addressing complex business challenges and making more possible for customers around the world. I’m honored to congratulate each winner and finalist.”

Powered by Localz technology, British Gas’ new “On my way” platform is helping keep its position as the leading energy supplier in the UK.

“The partnership will enable us to expand our proposition and take advantage of Ctrack’s advanced telematics expertise,” explains David Taylor, Global Business Director of Eworks Manager. “Ctrack is a likeminded business – possessing a similar outlook and mindset – with a complementary customer base and geographic reach. We quickly recognised the growth opportunities from working together both in the UK and within our international markets.”

The system integration will use Ctrack’s application programming interface (API), enabling real-time tracking data to be shared with Eworks Manager’s software solution that is designed to manage every aspect of field service workflow. This can include a wide range of fleet information including current position, trip summary, odometer reading, exception alerts such as speed violations, driver behaviour and tamper alerts.

This will enable Eworks Manager to build on its existing in-house vehicle tracking capabilities to develop unique and highly-functional management tools that empower a business with added intelligence, insight and control. By combining Eworks Manager’s web-based administrative system with both mobile and vehicle tracking technology, field service customer can ensure that internal and external processes are effectively managed and monitored.

Jason Laight, Head of Indirect Sales at Ctrack UK Ltd commented: “We have significant experience integrating our fleet tracking software with leading third-party applications such as ERP, routing and scheduling, work management, GIS and transport management. We are working closely with Eworks, using our advanced API and in-house development team, to develop a bespoke solution for the field service marketplace. This will benefit new and existing customers from both businesses as well as appealing to service organisations looking for a telematics-enabled workforce management solution.”

Arriva to introduce major CO2 emissions reduction programme across European bus fleet.

Arriva, a leading European passenger transport company, have signed a contract with TomTom Telematics, recently acquired by Bridgestone, to install its telematics system on up to 15,000 buses across the UK and nine countries in Mainland Europe.

Arriva is committed to reducing the global impacts of travel, improving air quality in congested towns and cities, and minimising its own environmental impacts as a business.

This latest technology investment - which provides drivers with instant feedback around braking, acceleration and idling - will enable Arriva to reduce fuel use from its bus operations by up to six per cent each year and cut CO2 emissions each year by up to 72,000 tonnes. This is the equivalent of reducing greenhouse gas emissions generated by more than 15,000 cars being driven in a year.

Jo Humphries, Arriva Group Transformation Director, said: “This investment in TomTom Telematics is an investment in our drivers. Every second of every journey, our 32,000 drivers have to make the right decisions to take passengers safely from pick-up to destination.

"When supported by regular coaching and training, our drivers will be equipped to drive the best they can. In doing so they can provide even safer and more comfortable journeys for passengers and reduce fuel usage to deliver substantive reductions in CO2 emissions.”

Thomas Schmidt, managing director of TomTom Telematics, said: “Arriva has recognised the business benefits that can be gained by improving operational visibility and empowering drivers to improve their performance behind the wheel.

“Our fleet management solution, WEBFLEET, gives Arriva powerful insights into areas for improvement across its extensive network. For instance, it highlights inefficiencies affecting the amount of fuel usage in a day.

“We are delighted that our innovative telematics technology will continue to help Arriva fulfil its long-term environmental and operational goals.”

The contract will support the installation of the technology on Arriva’s bus fleet in Croatia, Czech Republic, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, the Netherlands and the UK.