Over the last several years, there have been significant improvements in the various software packages available to the waste industry. Some of these packages now claim to be able to do everything except collect the trash and recyclables. But how do you know which package is right for you?

By Lynn Merrill

Software packages are divided primarily by the function that they perform within your operation. Some programs are designed to assist in managing your fleet operations, keeping track of the various costs associated with each truck in your fleet and providing you with information that may help in determining when to send old Number 99 out to pasture. Other software programs are particularly useful when it comes to managing scale functions at a landfill, transfer station, or MRF. These programs can integrate the weight function into a database so that the truck’s tare weights are measured against the weight on the scale, a weight ticket is generated, and a cost is allocated. Another family of software is particularly adept at taking of your customer locations and providing the most efficient routing from your depot to your disposal. The last class of software allows you to figure out what each of your customers owes you for services rendered.

Picking and choosing the right software programs for your operation involve a variety of challenges, ranging from making sure that the software will actually meet the current and future needs of your operation to having the technical ability and staffing to actually implement the programs effectively. Additionally, if you’re looking for an integrated system that actually does it all, the challenge is to ensure that the software from Vendor A will indeed talk to the software from Vendor B without requiring you to hire a Ph.D. in computer science.

By current estimates, there are at least 40 companies that offer software dedicated to the waste industry. These various software packages range from those that tell you when your bin was last dumped to fully integrated, collect-everything-in-the world programs that allow you to understand every aspect of your waste operation—whether it’s how many tons were delivered across your scale by one particular truck or aggregating all the various costs that tell you how much money you’re making or loosing on a particular route.

Software is a tool that helps you solve problems and manage effectively. But before you buy software, you need to understand what you want the software to accomplish for your business. If you don’t understand this, you may end up buying a package that doesn’t solve that problem, or is so complex that it is not used by you or your staff. “They have to know what it is they want to get from the data,” says Richard Tagore-Erwin of R3 Consulting Group Inc. (Sacramento, CA). “What data do they want to track and what do they want to do with the data? If they’re just trying to track customer service and billing data, that’s a whole different issue. If they want to track route activity data, or track maintenance data by route or by vehicle, that’s a different issue altogether. You really need to sit down and ask what information do you want and what are you going to do with it when you have it. You can get anything you want but, you know how it is, garbage in and garbage out with software.”

Managing Your Trucks
Being able to understand and manage the costs for your entire operation begin with proper management of your principle asset—your collection fleet. In essence, fleet software provides you with a database focused on each one of the trucks in your operation. The software starts with a record for each of the vehicles in your fleet, and will contain certain basic information, such as the year, make, and model of the vehicle, as well as registration and license information. The software will include the capability to collect and compile fuel usage, either through the interface with a fuel dispensing system or reader, or through manual input of a handwritten record. Each time your driver fuels the vehicle, the software updates the mileage and number of gallons pumped in order to track fuel consumption—one of the biggest cost elements of vehicle operation. This interface is particularly important because it further provides a measure of the number of miles that each truck travels between fueling, providing consumption costs. Most serviced intervals for trucks are based on either number of hours of operation or mileage, so accurate mileage input is a key trigger for your maintenance program.

The fleet management software will allow the user to set specific maintenance intervals within the software to generate preventive maintenance schedules. These fields are set by the user based on various parameters that include the type of service, such as oil change or brake inspection, and the vehicle type. Want to see your front-end loaders in the shop every 5,350 miles or after 992 hours? You can set this parameter into the basic schedule and each truck that reaches the threshold should pop up on a daily maintenance report when the truck reaches the pre-set parameter. The software will also be able to document the repairs and service work performed on each truck. The more sophisticated the software program, the more detailed pre-set information should already be in the system to be tracked and updated. For example, the software should be able to provide pre-set menus for various repair and maintenance functions broken down to a certain level of detail by vehicle component, such as engine or transmission. By clicking on the engine category, secondary menus should allow the selection of subcomponents of the engine, such as the electrical system or air system. These pre-set features provide for a much more user-friendly system that eliminates the need for the users to spend time setting up the basic categories themselves.

Scaling the Trucks
Another class of software is designed to manage the scale functions at landfills, transfer stations, or MRFs. These software programs provide the ability to compile data generating off of a scale, and sorting and aggregating the data by various parameters, such as vehicle type, material type, company, and costs. This software will have an interface between the scale itself in order to generate a weight ticket for each transaction. Unless the particular location is solely used by a single entity, the software should be able to allow establishment of customer accounts that will include vehicle numbers, tare weights and, in the case of roll-off operations, empty bin weights.

This customer and tare weight data is accessed at the time of the transaction. The system must be able to instantly access the customer data, calculate the weight of the load being brought in, allow the material to be assigned to a category such as inerts or recyclables, and assess a rate for the load and calculate a total cost before producing a weight ticket to give to the driver. These systems must be able to respond quickly to data access requests in order to keep the flow of vehicles moving through the operation. The software then compiles the various scale transactions into billings to a customer or reports to the operator of the facility.

Tell Me Where To Go
Routing software was developed to identify the shortest distance between two locations, given the various geographical constraints, such as streets and highways. It was developed in conjunction with Geographical Information Systems (GIS) that allow a user to take a series of locational points on a map and calculate the shortest distance from the first point through the last point. The simplest versions of these types of programs are what consumers use to look up directions on the Internet. But routing software takes the large number of stops associated with waste collection and, using sophisticated mathematical formulas, determines the most effective route, given such limitations as dead-end and one-way streets, areas such as schools that may have time-of-day restrictions, and customer delivery desires.

For most waste collection operations, residential collection is probably the most stable and programmable as far as routing. The truck moves up and down streets in a systematic and routine route that changes little from week to week. If a customer hasn’t set out their cart for that service day, the driver simply bypasses the address and moves to the address next door. Where routing software is most valuable is the ever-changing commercial operations. While most front-load operations work on the same grid-route concept that residential collection uses, the individual stops within the grid change from day to day based on customer needs. In these particular cases, the routing software should have an additional level of sophistication that takes into account the cumulative weight and volume of the proposed route in order to ensure maximum payload. Roll-off operations further benefit from routing software due to their wide variety of scheduling and locational needs.

Almost all routing software programs have achieved a high level of accuracy and ease of use in the last few years. These systems are now being combined and enhanced with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) to not only be able to tell the driver what their route is, but to be able to know in real time where the truck is in order to make the most effective route changes throughout a service day. This allows customer service and dispatching staff to be able to know which truck is closest to that customer who calls in at 10:00 a.m. and desperately needs their 4-yard bin dumped, or to be able to assure the elderly residential customer that calls each Monday afternoon, that the truck is just in the next block and will be there in 10 minutes.

Show Me the Revenue
The final software program element is the business management software system. These programs maintain all customer data, such as service days, bin or cart number and type, and billing and service addresses. All transactional history with that customer is maintained in this system, which is accessible to your customer service staff. Service requests and billing are generated within this system, and the various management reports are compiled from data within this system.

Key issues with business management software are the ability to manage a large volume of customer data effectively and to be able to generate the reports needed to manage the operation. Much of the current business management software includes a significant level of sophistication in the data management, billing, and reporting functions. User-friendly and time-efficient features have reduced the level of difficulty once present in early versions of the software programs, and improvements in the platforms and hardware configurations have further streamlined these systems.

Putting It All Together
How do you know whether you really need software? “You probably need a software package if you’ve ever lost track of the container,” says Barry Grahek, president of DesertMicro (Jacksonville, FL). “Whenever you’ve lost track of a dispatch ticket and found that it was an invoice, or you find yourself doing double entry or triple entry in some cases of any of the information needed to operate your business, that’s when you know you’ve got too many nonintegrated pieces. And the software investment is much cheaper than the labor and investment of continually rekeying that information and potentially not capturing all the revenue that you’ve earned. It’s costing you money and you don’t even know it’s happening.”

With the rapid advances in technology, especially in wireless and hand-helds, the ability to integrate and streamline the various functions has led to several vendors offering software packages that combine all four functional areas into one single-vendor package. This trend has eliminated some of the earlier challenges of trying to get a routing software package to communicate with a billing package while creating more sophisticated programs that include real-time vehicle tracking, on-board dispatching, and weight-ticket-to-billing-statement data flows. But with all the sophistication, what are the basic functions that these software packages should do for you?

“If you’re talking about business management, you would say that it has to be able to add, edit, and manage customer information, set them up with pricing and have it apply that pricing on a recurring schedule,” states Nathaniel “Nate” Piersall, president of Core Computing Solutions (Honolulu, HI). “It should generate a bill, be able to process that information once payments are received, throw the customer on a route, and be able to print a route sheet. That’s it for a basic hauler that does residential service. If you’re talking about the route management system, you need to be able to generate multiple routes, switch stops between routes, and copy stops off of one route to another temporarily. If you’re talking fleet management, you need to be able to store basic asset information and be able to generate and track any type of work order where you’re tracking costs and histories of inspections done on that vehicle as well as generate preventive maintenance schedules. If you’re talking MRF or landfill management, the system has to be able to read through a scale and create a ticket representing the truck, the company, the gross weight, the net weight, and other information on that vehicle.”

Implementing any software program into your operation should be as painless as possible. “You have to remember that introducing new technology brings change to the organization,” says Steve Kaufman, senior vice president with Routeware Inc. (Beaverton, OR). “Change always has three reactions. Some people all who are forward thinkers and love leading-edge stuff embrace it, a number of people are neutral or with a bit of trepidation, and you’ll always have some people that will resist it. The way you disperse concern is to be very organized from the beginning. Have a project plan that maps out all of the infinite details of the project and more importantly the post implementation pieces of the project. You can’t drop technology of this magnitude on an organization that’s not used to it or that has gone through a major upgrade, and not have a plan for the 90 to 120 days after it gets in to effectively manage it until that new system is institutionalized and becomes part of the daily routine.”

With all the vendors, the development of an implementation plan is key to the successful implementation. Go into the process with your eyes wide open. “The hard part is when the honeymoon ends and you begin using this system,” says Kaufman. “Inevitably expectations are high and, I don’t care whose technology you have, it will always have issues. It will be harder in some areas and easier in others. Some expectations will be exceeded, some will be met and some will not be met. If the company’s eyes are wide open to that it makes it much easier. That’s the level or the backdrop against which you’re measuring your milestones for success. So long as you understand no technology can do everything that everybody wants and no technology can solve every single problem.”

With the new emphasis on wireless communications, the trend to put more and more information onto the truck is rapidly growing, and the addition of touch-screens and keyboards that are rugged enough to withstand the harsh work environment of a garbage truck cab can be a challenge. “The biggest challenge we have is the recognition that the garbage truck is a pretty brutal environment to put an onboard computer,” says Kaufman. “The chief challenges have been stabilizing power, because trucks generate dirty power that fluctuates wildly in the same truck. The other part is making sure that you’ve got hardware that can go in and kind of get out of the way. Those cabs can be pretty cramped especially if they’ve put a lot of third-party products inside. On the software, one of the biggest technical challenges is the recognition that no two haulers pick up trash the same way. To try and come up with a product and a set of services to address the specifics of how a hauler does their job and then have a product generic enough for the marketplace, it is really challenging.”

Reliability of both hardware and software systems has frustrated customers in the past, but this has changed. “The biggest thing that has changed over the last couple years—that has frustrated users in the past—is the reliability of the network,” says Grahek. “That’s both the network connection between the workstation and the server preventing the user from accomplishing his task, as well as the network connecting the truck through the wireless connection to transmit his GPS data back to the server. These servers and workstations, in the last couple of years, they have truly become plug-and-play. There is no administration needed, no third-party hardware contracts to keep the software running. And that really changes the speed and the cost the waste haulers are going to go through, trying to implement new software. It decreases the speed dramatically and decreases the cost by as much as 40 and 50%.”

Future software enhancements will continue to build on the integration of various systems in order to speed up the flow of data between the various users. “One of the linkages that you’ll see in place will be where a customer will call and the software will pick up that customers phone number,” says Tagore-Erwin. “It is plugged into the database so that when that call is transferred to the CSR’s screen, that customers information pops right up. She doesn’t have to get the name and type it back in; she just has to verify. It’s all being read from the phone number. The next linkage will allow the CSRs to be able to to put up a clickable icon so if the customer has a missed collection, they can click on that icon and say, Mr. Jones we’re looking at your records and the driver was at your house at 9:30 this morning and the cart was not out. Or we clicked on that record and it looks like the driver was stuck in traffic, and he’s three blocks away and he should be there in about 15 or 20 minutes. That’s where I see this thing going is that the customer service representative has that same real-time data that the dispatcher has. The direct linkage in real-time between the dispatcher and the CSR isn’t there yet.”

Lynn Merrill is a consultant based in southern California.

MSW - September/October 2005