SOLUTIONS > USE CASE
KEEPING COSTS UNDER CONTROL
Keep control
of costs
The shifting demands of school transport constantly reshape your costs. New starters, changing pupil needs, and altered provision can dramatically impact your budget.
Stay on top of these changes, with clear, reliable cost data at your fingertips. Vantage brings that visibility. Whether it’s cost per mile, route, school, operator, or pupil, month by month, Vantage helps you drill into the details and take control of the numbers that matter.
Supporting cost control at every step
When you need to spot unexpected cost spikes before they become a problem:
Vantage detects and visualises changes – by route, operator, school, or pupil
When you need to investigate and remedy sudden cost anomalies:
Vantage surfaces the data behind each alert, so you’re ready for provider conversations
When you need to track and manage cost creep:
Vantage captures and plots detailed cost trends so you can catch issues early
What is Vantage
optimisation?
Move on from planning a school at a time and embrace the wider view. Vantage’s ‘Route All’ functionality breaks the boundaries of route optimisation problems to process all trips, to all destinations, all together. And in doing so, finds opportunities to share trips that would otherwise be impossible to spot in school transport’s fast-moving environment.
Take control of your transport costs
Vantage’s intuitive dashboard adds powerful analytical insight. Designed for transport teams, finance managers, and commissioners, it helps you keep school transport costs under control.
Case study
Robert Sullivant: They don’t always understand
but they do understand QRoutes
Text description
What customers say about QRoutes
Speaker 1: It’s always good to meet other authorities who are doing the same thing as you, I was just saying it’s so easy to forget that others are in the same boat and everyone has the same problems every day. I think QRoutes is great because, not only is it sort of visual for me, but it’s also really good to kind of show other stakeholders who don’t deal with the day-to-day sort of – children don’t get on, they don’t understand the amount of changes that we have to put into place but they do understand the summary information which is, you know, QRoutes give us and it’s 12 hours versus 10. Everyone understands that.
Speaker 2: The way we work with our operators now, very much in the past we just used to be saying here’s a route and please could you run it. Now we’re very much able to put a tender out to our operators specifying the exact route and the pick ups, so when we get tender responses back we are comparing true like for like.
Speaker 3: QRoutes makes things so much easier, and getting new students onto transport, by pulling up the existing routes and adding a child in and clicking the ‘optimal route’ button, it’s so much quicker than having to try and run everything though Google Maps.
Speaker 4: With QRoutes, I think it’s still a valuable tool for even very experienced planners. They’ll have ideas in their head that they believe is the most efficient way, but sometimes it’s better for a tool that will sort of look at things they won’t see.
Speaker 5: We’re quite new to QRoutes but I have really enjoyed the development process, and just how much support that QRoutes have actually put in.
Supporting cost control at every step
When you need to support budgeting and funding decisions:
Vantage provides clear insights to inform planning and financial strategy
When you need a clear understanding of operational costs:
QRoutes enables you to report on cost per mile, cost per passenger, and other KPIs
When you need to make services more efficient and sustainable:
Vantage helps you balance cost, carbon, and journey quality in one view
VANTAGE
The ultimate tool for SEND transport planners, service directors, and CFOs who want to explore every available avenue to protect services now, and creatively shape their future. Optimisation without compromise. Planning without borders. Transformation without limits.
QROUTES
Route optimisation for shared journeys when costs, carbon, and journey experience really matter. It’s designed for SEND and Mainstream transport planners who know and care about what good looks like, and want to find savings of up to 20% more than competing optimisation products.
Spot discrepancies
Filter and sort routes by cost, passenger numbers, distance, and more to find outliers or missing data.
Understand route performance
Easily review the financial performance of each route to ensure value for money.
Feel supported
Fast responses from a friendly team! We’re expert in our tools and, through our contact with local authorities across the UK, able to advise on how others approach tasks.
Make faster, smarter decisions
Replace spreadsheets with visual, up-to-date data that makes it easier to act.
Evidence. Insight. Action
Vantage gives you the tools to:
- Find real savings in your current network
- Make data-led decisions with confidence
- Design the future of school transport, creatively and sustainably
Optimisation without compromise. Planning without borders. Transformation without limits.
More ways Vantage
supports you
The ability to filter routes by various criteria, such as cost changes, missing data, or new/ended routes, can surface outliers or inconsistencies that may indicate data quality issues. Sorting routes by cost per mile or cost per passenger can also highlight routes with unusually high or low values that may warrant further investigation.
Move on from planning a school at a time. Vantage’s ‘Schedule All’ functionality breaks the boundaries of standard route optimisation to process all trips, to all destinations, all together. It finds opportunities to share trips that would otherwise be impossible to spot.
Vantage’s speed at tackling large routing problems means you can also easily test alternative options. What if you invested in different vehicles? What if you built a new facility here? What if the children from these schools shared transport?
Believe me it’s a fantastic product and we get great service from you guys, we’d be lost without it now!
We’ve made substantial savings on our large school reviews and also reduced the number of vehicles going onto school sites – which is helping on our services’ carbon footprint!
Staffordshire County Council
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