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With 70 runs every day, and 15 schools in the school district, Greater St. Albert Catholic Schools found themselves in a tough situation. The school district handled transportation for around 5,600 students and their previous routing software wasn’t meeting their needs.
Lauri-Ann said “We moved away from our previous software because it didn’t have the features we needed, outages often lasted multiple days, there was no way to synchronize the GPS with the software, it was clunky, we couldn’t import student data — overall, it wasn’t fulfilling the needs of our school district.”
Greater St. Albert Catholic Schools got to know about BusPlanner from other transportation professionals in the province. “I heard colleagues in other school districts talking about this leading-edge software where everything was automated and we didn’t have to add students in manually.”
After experiencing the software for themselves, the routing team at Greater St. Albert was sold. “BusPlanner was our only choice because it gave us all the tools we needed. The maps were aesthetically appealing, and we could easily compare different runs.”
Redundant tasks are a big roadblock for school transportation departments. Lauri-Ann says, “If you make a mistake on your grant, it can cost you $1,000s. BusPlanner handles the day-to-day tasks, so I can focus on making the right decision for things that have a significant impact.”
“I feel like I’m a part of BusPlanner!” Lauri-Ann was ecstatic at how effectively the BusPlanner team implements feedback. She recounted when the team integrated support to view topographical data from Google Maps directly from BusPlanner based on her feedback. Lauri-Ann exclaimed, “This connectivity has changed my world!”
In 8 years, the BusPlanner team showcased that they care about their clients. First, they added Google reviews based on Lauri-Ann’s feedback. She then requested for extended properties that allows users to sort and filter based on their requirements, which was added in another update. “This allows users to create targeted messages to parents,” she explained.
Another important thing about BusPlanner is how tech-forward the company is. “BusPlanner promises two updates a year and they always overdeliver,” added Lauri-Ann.
The team at Greater St. Albert has immensely benefitted from gains in operational efficiency after using BusPlanner.
The Greater St. Albert team removed 25 routes,
leading to over $800k in savings, as Lauri-Ann mentioned.
Lauri-Ann loves that BusPlanner allows her team to manage everything from a single database without compromising on functionality.
BusPlanner reduced the slack time from 20 to 10 minutes for every route. This helps the school district save time and fuel.
BusPlanner allows the routing team to create PDFs from emails. Doing so allows them to save more information to student records.
Before using BusPlanner, they received over 30 phone calls a day — after switching to BusPlanner, that number went down to 5.
Parents can track their children when they’re on the bus, and receive important alerts about route changes and potential hazards.
The team at Greater St. Albert was also captivated by the “human” aspect of things at BusPlanner. Their interaction with the BusPlanner team convinced the transportation department of the quality care and service they would receive.
“BusPlanner’s team makes us feel valued & that’s a big part of how the company has always operated. Other school districts really want to be a part of the BusPlanner family, because they know about the excellent service & overall product quality.”
Lauri-Ann explained the main reasons why her school district plans to stick with BusPlanner for an extended period.
