We love hearing how ODL Studio is helping our users fulfil their business needs. We recently spoke to Robin Taylor of the TAS Partnership who told us about what they’ve been doing with ODL Studio:

The TAS Partnership Ltd is a leading UK passenger transport consultancy. A lot of our work is for local authorities assisting them with client transport, particularly home to school transport, including that for children with special educational needs. The current pressures on local authority finance means that all aspects of the transport arrangements need to be as efficient and cost-effective as possible. We therefore need a tool to help us review their planned networks and where necessary to reschedule the services so as to reduce the number of vehicles involved without disadvantaging the passengers. We have traditionally undertaken the exercise on a semi-manual basis using a combination of Microsoft Excel and MapPoint, occasionally transferring to a more sophisticated GIS package. Whilst effective, this took time, particularly testing out alternatives, and some of the data handling was unwieldy. With Microsoft withdrawing its support for MapPoint, we therefore have a need for a comprehensive, robust routing software for creating home to school transport schedules, and for us to run "what if's" in response to feedback from the schools involved as to the acceptability of the proposed routes for the individual children, taking into account their individual circumstances, requirement for personal assistance, extra boarding and alighting time, more space in the vehicle and so on. We have been testing Open Door Logistics Studio over the past month and it appears to fill this need perfectly with it’s easy to use UI, connectivity with Excel and rapid scheduling algorithm. The ability to export routes directly to ESRI shapefiles is a great boost to workflow and allows a direct connection with our other GIS packages. The learning curve was not too challenging for someone reasonably competent and the existing support notes and videos have enabled us to get to a stage where we are happy with the software to the extent that we are now using it 'live' for a client. Robin Taylor, TAS Partnership Ltd