TransTrack Achieves Three Years of Continuous Growth With GoodData

TransTrack grows its business YoY and creates accessible BI for transit agencies with GoodData

TransTrack partnered with GoodData to scale BI adoption within the public transportation sector. Through its customizable and intuitive tool, TransTrack Manager, the company has helped agencies improve operations and navigate challenges associated with COVID-19.

Dave Jackson serves as General Manager at TransTrack, where he oversees TransTrack Manager, a cloud-based tool powered by GoodData. The technology helps transit agencies understand and optimize their data to make better decisions. Since its inception, TransTrack has been a data-centric business. Its partnership with GoodData sprung from their realization that the company could be doing even more for its valued customers. In 2017, TransTrack partnered with GoodData to strengthen its TransTrack Manager tool and bring enhanced insights to transit agencies looking to combine multiple data sources.

TransTrack Manager, powered by GoodData, enables complex data modeling behind the scenes and allows for multiple data sources to be analyzed in unison. According to Jackson, “compound metrics really change the game. Instead of just reporting on trip hours and miles for example, we can actually track things like cost per vehicle for every hour in service, or number of passengers per revenue hour. In combining data sets, our customers can better understand their business as well as get really granular and identify the types of insights that have a profound impact on business.”

Jackson emphasized that the “self-service” model GoodData offers was a major selling point when comparing it against competitors. Today, TransTrack customers can utilize both the standard set of analytics that Transtrack provides, and create their own functions as well. Because no transit agency operates the same — or tracks all of the same KPIs — the customizable nature of GoodData is a significant value-add.

Leveraging business intelligence to help transit providers through the COVID-19 pandemic

The American Public Transit Association found that public transit ridership dropped 40.7% in March 2020 as COVID-19 accelerated its spread in the U.S. Since then, transit operations have rebounded, though many Americans remain cautious. Changing consumer habits make business intelligence an even more vital piece of the strategic puzzle for transit agencies.

“Transit agencies have faced a myriad of challenges this year,” said Jackson. “Fortunately, we’ve been able to help our customers leverage their data to overcome COVID-induced obstacles, and have facilitated a shift towards more data-driven decision making in the future.”

Having quick access to accurate and highly tailored BI helps transit agencies improve effectiveness and identify potential inefficiencies amidst this tenuous time. TransTrack Manager offers a series of dashboards, standard and ad-hoc reports, data exports, and alerts. These enable employees to identify dwell time, ridership, places where vehicles continuously run late and/or early and compliance with safety precautions in order to improve overall experience for both riders and operators.

Similarly, TransTrack Manager helps answer tough questions like how to reduce volume and frequency of rides while still ensuring people can get where they need to be. “Our customers have reported increased use of TransTrack Manager as a result of the coronavirus pandemic,” said Jackson. “They need highly sophisticated data reporting and analytics in order to make complex decisions. Our partnership with GoodData has allowed us to deliver that for them, and continue to exceed expectations.”

Employing GoodData to ensure compliance with new government policies

Even before the global pandemic, the transportation industry faced new challenges in the form of complex government regulations. According to Jackson, “safety is super important when it comes to transportation. Our customers are committed to protecting riders, and that means ensuring they are compliant with the latest regulations.”

Within TransTrack Manager, customers can create highly specific risk matrices that demonstrate compliance with regulations like the Public Transportation Agency Safety Plan (PTASP), for example. And for state or local laws, transit agencies can use GoodData’s customizable dashboarding to build new data models quickly.

“We knew we needed a flexible and customizable data partner because of how different transit laws are across state borders,” said Jackson. “A good percentage of our customers are in California, where all transit bus fleets must be zero-emission by 2040. That will bring a whole slew of new requirements and data to closely monitor, analyze and model for the future.”

Scaling GoodData within TransTrack to tackle societal impact of transportation

In the future, Jackson sees an opportunity for TransTrack customers to leverage their data for more than reporting on internal efficiencies and safety compliance. “I think there is potential for transportation data to be used to aid social justice movements and minimize negative environmental consequences of emissions. We want to get to a point where our customers are analyzing myriad data sources in unison and utilizing them to plan their business.”

According to Jackson, “the more we can focus on helping transit agencies make the right decisions, the better.” Regulated industries such as public transportation certainly need tracking tools but they can also enhance performance with better predictive technology to anticipate new patterns and consumer behavior. Equipped with the granular insights, data-driven decision making becomes that much easier.

“GoodData has already allowed us to help major transit agencies across the country make vital changes that have a direct impact on cost reduction and consumer experience. As transportation needs evolve, and even as we envision a future with widespread electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles, we believe GoodData will scale with us to continue servicing the country’s public transportation industry.”