News from Yotta

Leamington Spa, UK, 17 August 2017 – In line with its ongoing commitment to invest in innovative technology to improve, modernise and streamline its services, Newport City Council in South Wales has adopted a new waste management software solution from specialist provider, Yotta to provide an enhanced waste collection service for local residents.

The council are now managing their domestic and trade refuse collection services with the Mayrise Waste back-office management system, and the full fleet are now live with the Mayrise in-cab solution.

The Mayrise in-cab software uses a vehicle-mounted mobile tablet to integrate with the Mayrise Waste back office system, giving frontline staff access to the latest service and reference information. It supports real-time two-way communication between the council’s waste crews out in the field and the back-office customer service team.

Waste crews can now log incidents, such as bins not being presented for collection, or damaged or contaminated bins, immediately during the round. The ability to compile and send reports digitally rather than going through the time-consuming process of filing paper-based reports has also helped the council drive further operational efficiencies and generate additional time and money savings.

The information is relayed to the back office team in real-time, helping to keep them continuously informed and enabling them to answer customer enquiries more quickly and achieve higher rates of first point of contact resolution. Ultimately, the council is also looking to use the enhanced intelligence it has gained to achieve a year-on-year reduction in overall call numbers.

It is already using the Mayrise in-cab software to generate automatic works orders by logging incidences, for example, of where properties should have had replacement bins but have not yet received them, or where bins are broken or damaged so that crews can go out and rectify the problem as quickly as possible.

“The Yotta in-cab solution is supporting us transforming our approach to waste collection,” says Georgina Cooper, Project Manager, Newport City Council. “It is allowing us to respond rapidly to residents with accurate up-to-the minute information. This will help us keep the public informed and has helped to foster positive relations. Previously, we would have often had to escalate issues to our back office to investigate, which would have inevitably slowed the whole process down”.

“The other major benefit we have identified through the use of Mayrise is the opportunity to access digitised data within the waste setting,” she adds. “We are looking forward to using the digital data captured by Mayrise in the back office to help empower the way we use the mobile waste application and drive more informed decision-making processes across our strategic waste activities.”

Newport City Council reports that staff have enthusiastically embraced the changes generated by the introduction of the Yotta software. In a recent internal survey of customer service agents, 70% said they thought they were able to provide customers with a better service as a result of being able to access the in-cab waste management software. Moreover, many members of the waste crews agree that the tablets are useful and that the in-cab software is saving them time.

Carl Dockings, Assistant Manager Refuse, Newport City Council, adds: “Before implementing Mayrise, collection supervisors were inundated with work whenever a collection was missed. They would have to check each one in paper-based files, find the routes and confirm the reasons given for the missed collection before going back to the contact centre with the details to provide to the residents as and when required. With Mayrise, we now have the information we need all in one place instead of being scattered across different spreadsheets and Word files. The whole approach is more streamlined and efficient and it is saving the department a lot of time.

“Moving forwards, we are looking to derive additional benefits from Mayrise,” continues Mr Dockings. “There is a wealth of functionality inside Mayrise and we want to train our system users to tap into this more and start generating reports that together will help inform our strategic asset management approach and enable us to deliver significant operational efficiencies.”

According to Steve White, Software Business Development Manager, Yotta: “We are on a cusp of a new era in waste management. In line with that, we are seeing pioneering local authorities like Newport City Council taking advantage of the opportunities that solutions like our in-cab waste management system provides to drive operational efficiencies and deliver an enhanced service to the public. It’s a ‘win win’ for all concerned.”