Going for gold medal support – why there’s more to routing and scheduling than just software

The achievements of Team GB at the Rio Olympics and Paralympics have propelled many athletes into the spotlight. Quite rightly, we’ve proudly celebrated every medal won and world record broken by our Olympians. But what should never be overlooked is the role played by the support staff that also travelled to Brazil. These people working behind the scenes providing coaching, nutritional and scientific support since London 2012 have been critical to GB’s talented athletes bringing home a record-breaking medal haul.

At Paragon, we recognise the importance of providing high levels of planning, support and expert advice to our customers. While advanced routing and scheduling software is critical, of equal importance is the support team that accompanies every technology solution. Here are a number of reasons why Paragon delivers what we believe to be a gold medal-winning package:

Getting off the starting blocks
We take a joined up approach across our team of technology consultants, technical analysts and developers to provide exceptional presale, solution design and implementation support to ensure all of our customers get the best launch off the starting blocks. The consultants are always on hand to provide help and where necessary they have direct access to our dedicated developers that are responsible for creating the software. For example, based on customer feedback they have developed the Route Control functionality that now allows transport planners to reduce the impact of the London Lorry Control Scheme.

Getting in the zone
Last year we opened the doors to our Paragon Technology Centre. This virtual transport office allows customers to take time out away from their day-to-day responsibilities to focus on cost savings, operational efficiencies and enhanced customer service. Our teams can share their expertise and provide demonstrations to help existing users tune their routing and scheduling performance and help incoming customers understand what goals they could achieve with Paragon routing and scheduling software.

Technical expertise
Our longstanding relationship with Microsoft is helping our dedicated development team build transport planning systems that embrace the latest innovations in cloud computing, three-tier infrastructure and parallel processing. As part of the Premier Support for Developers programme, we are developing our software to take advantage of the latest Microsoft technology. We also benefit from the power of having a wider technical team behind us to respond quickly and efficiently to any challenging technical issues.

Trouble spotting
If there’s something you, or any member of your team, don’t know how to do then our specialist hotline can help you get back on track as quickly as possible. The hotline analysts resolve more than 97 per cent of incoming issues without the need for escalation to the company’s wider support and development teams. Their wide-ranging technical knowledge and experience means they can often help out with issues that are unrelated to our routing and scheduling software, making them highly valued back up for our customers’ demanding transport operations.

Training and ongoing support
Once you’ve achieved your goal of implementing routing and scheduling software, it’s important that you have a team of people behind you to keep you at the top of your game. As a Paragon customer, you’ll have a dedicated account manager and support manager to help you ensure that you continue to get the best performance out of your Paragon routing and scheduling software. You will also have access to training videos and how-to documents in Paragon World, and be able to make use of our award-winning system operation guide which is designed for everybody from absolute beginners to experienced Paragon pros. You will also receive regular software updates as part of your annual maintenance service to ensure you always have the very latest tools to enhance your planning performance.

So what are you waiting for?
Our success is not limited to Great Britain. We currently have Paragon routing and scheduling systems in 61 countries across the world as well as local support teams on the ground in the USA and China. You can read some of our customer successes here, or get in touch to find out how we can help your transport team optimise its performance.