Passengers and courier information system: a case of Akamba public road service limited

Abstract

Akamba Bus Company offers passenger travel services and courier services. This project developed an Online Passenger and Courier Services Information System for the company. Currently the company processes and prepares travel tickets manually. This requires intending passengers to physically appear at the company offices to avail the data required to prepare a travel ticket. Therefore travelers have to incur extra costs and time. There is no on-time coordination of data between the various company offices that are spread in different towns across East Africa. Revenue reports are not readily available when required and often they lack consistence and accuracy. In addition, customer consignment is not readily tracked by the existing system during the shipping process. There are instances when consignments get lost or are delivered at the wrong destination or are delivered late or a combination of these. The main objective of developing an online system was to improve business process in the company, reduce the costs and time that is involved in acquiring a travel ticket and improve in the management of cargo from receipt to delivery. The system will also enable consistent, timely and accurate reports to be generated whenever required. All this will translate into better customer satisfaction and higher profits for the company. Other objectives of the system were; reviewing the existing manual systems for booking and consignment tracking, designing a web based system that will facilitate the process of booking bus seats and consignment tracking, implementing the system, testing and validating the system. To develop the system, relevant data was collected from the company. The data was analyzed to identify the system requirements. The system was then designed and implemented based on these requirements. Finally the system was tested for the functionality.