Green Tomato Cars, a minicab service that operates a fleet of hybrid cars in London, has switched to Magenta Technology’s Echo software – helping it achieve year-on-year growth.

Echo, Magenta’s next generation scheduling solution for the minicab, private hire and limousine businesses, streamlines and automates business processes and has helped Green Tomato Cars build on its market success.

“Automatic allocation, bespoke customer services functions, and integrated apps convinced us we were getting a unique, feature-rich solution that would differentiate our services from the other players in the market,” said Mike Tobin, managing director of Green Tomato Cars UK.

“Echo is the key technology enabler in our business and we are now in a far stronger position than ever before, both in terms of people and technology.”

Allocating jobs to drivers based on multiple complex criteria and looking at the fleet performance as a whole, Echo computes and monitors factors like dead mileage, delays in pick-up, idle driver time, customer category and preferences, along with a range of other parameters and input from third-party integrations. Optimised job tasking is then sent to drivers on their mobile devices.

Echo also provides a multi-dimensional view for controllers, enabling them to make a better decision faster.

Duncan Fendom, global IT director for Green Tomato Cars, said: “We are experiencing an increase in bookings of more than 35% coming through our new web portal and smartphone apps for iPhone and Android. In addition, we are seeing an increase in electronic booking and dispatch, driven by the efficiency of automatic allocation.

“Thanks to the Echo platform, we are poised to scale our business volume up by 50 to 100%, which will deliver substantial bottom line results.”