"PASS is London Transport's best kept secret," said David White, EPOS Project and IT Department Manager for London Transport's Passenger Agents Sales Service (PASS). "We are responsible for sales of 98% of all of London Transport's bus passes and 17% of Travel Cards. In the last financial year we sold 33 million tickets and turned over £175 million, and yet a surprisingly small number of the public realise that we exist."

2,300 distributors of travelcards
PASS operates as an independent commercial trading unit within London Transport, supplying daily, weekly and monthly passes, child rate photocards and Travelcards through a network of 2,300 agents. Almost all of the agents are small newsagents/tobacconists located throughout the London Transport area which covers Greater London and the Home Counties.

Since the 1st of April 1996, PASS has also been responsible for some £5 million of bulk sales of tickets to Local Authorities for OAPs and students as well as £7 million to large companies who issue them to their employees. These sales are handled directly from PASS's headquarters in Docklands.

PASS took over the management of the ticket sales through agents in 1991, from London District Pass Distributors which was set up by London Transport in conjunction with the National Federation of Retail Newsagents. One of the first problems it encountered was a significant difference between the physical stock of tickets in its warehouse or in the hands of the Agents and the recorded figures. There are some 200 different types of tickets required to cover every zone, time period and type of traveller. Since records of sales are based on correct reconciliation of all stock, PASS had to undertake a full audit and revise all the records. They realised immediately that their existing accounting system which ran on an IBM System 36 did not have the ability to provide the level of stock reconciliation which they needed and they would have to set about finding a new system.

the system
They issued an ITT and finally selected Strategix, because it offered a fully integrated accounts and stock reconciliation system down to serial number level. They also considered an AS/400 solution but rejected it in favour of the Strategix open system approach.

PASS implemented Strategix Nominal, Sales and Purchase Ledgers, Stock Control and Report Writer running on a MIPS UNIX system supporting 24 users. Strategix also undertook some bespoke development to handle a number of special requirements for PASS.

"The Strategix team provided excellent project management for the implementation and worked closely with our IT staff. Training was handled jointly and Strategix provide on going support to back up our own people. We have six IT staff who work a shift system to provide cover from 7 am to midnight," explained Roger Harding, General Manager for PASS.

in operation
In operation the Strategix system has proved invaluable in controlling ticket stocks and allocations and in providing accurate sales analysis for input into PASS's sales forecasting system which provides information to its own ticket purchasing department and to the Agents.

PASS employs 14 representatives who visit the agents regularly to record details of all the ticket sales. Each rep carries a hand held computer (HHT) which holds records of all ticket deliveries, stocks and account details for each agent in the relevant territory. When visiting an agent, the rep calls up that information, counts the current stock of tickets and inputs the figures into the HHT which then calculates the sales and prints out an invoice, immediately. Cheques are normally collected and banked the same day. The HHT also prompts the rep to re-order using the new sales data and information from the forecasting system which calculates potential seasonal fluctuations in ticket sales. Each night the HHTs dial into a PC at PASS and transfer all the data accumulated from the agents and collect information on the latest ticket despatches together with the current sales forecast data. The PC holds the details of payments made until the cheques have cleared and post dates the ticket orders for seven days before automatically updating the Strategix accounting system.

Monthly accounts are produced within a few days of the end of each month and management reports are available immediately.

The most dramatic benefits of the Strategix system have been in the management of ticket stocks. The warehouse staff enter details of all new ticket stocks, which are received into the PASS bonded warehouse from the printers, in the Strategix Stock Control System by quantity and serial numbers. The software combines each day's orders to produce a bulk picking list, telling the staff which serial numbers have been allocated to agents' stock. Then, by using the agent's reference number as a warehouse location, PASS can identify the serial numbers which have been allocated to each one. These are all recorded on the Despatch Notes which accompany the orders and which are delivered by PASS's own drivers. All the data is held in Strategix so that, should there be a case of theft, fraud or loss, PASS can always identify which agent held the tickets.

To deal with spoiled tickets or reclaims Strategix wrote a bespoke module for PASS which enables agents to call in by telephone to register their spoiled tickets and be issued with an authorisation code. When the tickets are physically returned by the reps, they are reconciled with the information recorded in the Claims system and a credit is issued. The information is then automatically recorded in the Strategix stock control system.

Since the implementation of the Strategix system, PASS has dramatically improved its stock reconciliation. Each year, when London Transport changes the ticket prices, PASS has to recall all unsold tickets and replace them with the tickets quoting the new prices. In 1995 PASS printed and distributed 38 million tickets worth £75 million and sold 33 million worth £62 million. When they undertook the reconciliation they found a discrepancy of 742 tickets worth £622 - less than 0.3%. This has resulted in substantial savings in costs in ticket production as well as improved forecasting of demand.

the future
PASS is just completing a pilot programme for a new EPOS scheme which will revolutionise the whole operation. They will be installing EPOS terminals linked directly to PASS's central computer system in 1700 of the outlets. This will enable them to reduce the number of ticket types from the 200 they produce now to 10 blanks which will be identified by colour. When a customer asks for a particular type of bus pass, the agent will select the details of the type of ticket, zone, price, dates etc. via the keyboard of the EPOS terminal and the system will produce printed tickets with an encoded magnetic strip on the back. They will no longer need to stock, despatch, count or collect hundreds of different types of tickets and all sales information will be accumulated directly from the point of sale and uploaded during a nightly poll of the EPOS terminals. Stock and financial information will be fed into the Strategix system which will produce invoices for the individual agents, based on tickets sold, and update the sales ledger and the other accounting modules.

"The work that we have done with Strategix over the past few years has enabled us to develop a very efficient ticket management system and we anticipate that the new EPOS system will enhance that still further. The Strategix system has more than met our demands both in its high level of core functionality and its openness. We have been able to integrate it with our other systems and adapt it to meet our particular requirements," said David White.