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From the perspective of many years hindsight, the original abstract of ThruDispatch was written by a person who was knowledgeable in regards to dispatching freelance owner / operators. In those days Nextel ruled the roost, due to the ubiquity of PPT; but who could have predicted the all-encompassing seduction of the market by mobile platforms? IOS, Android, phones that do things that PC desktops still can’t do well, and on and on. Mobile development tools, like J2ME….are still out there…but there are now literally dozens of cross-platform, design once deliver many power platforms.
Power Platforms? They are really Super Platforms. I write this in 2013, years after stomping around the Bay Area trying to raise a sliver of capital to get ThruDispatch the resources needed to finally deliver what the independent mobile skilled trade market wanted back then, and still wants today . And this last revelation is a wake up call:
Years after the first ThruDispatch Bizplan was pitched, an amazing innovation streak has grasped the mobile app model and market; the momentum of mobile platforms exceeds market benchmarks at every turn – and with all of this success…the independent towing, locksmith, auctions, delivery, etc. should already have access to virtual fleet management and per-project, collapsible workforce planning on-demand…but they don’t….because the institutional money continues its cultural aversion to the technical trades and service verticals….for reasons that continue to escape me.
So, now, do I leave the ThruDispatch plan on the shelf, or go on to another round of pitching…..7 years later? You tell me.
” What is Thru Dispatch?…..
The ThruDispatch portal is a service-oriented Web architecture in which mobile service workers (towing, mobile glass repair, mobile locksmiths) receive work from unaffiliated, semi-affiliated, or casually affiliated job submitters. They may not initially know the submitter. The submitter may express no preference for the recipient, or might express a preferred recipient.
Virtual fleets of independents can be created and dissolved at will, or exist for one set of jobs only. On-the-fly jobs can be multicast to the enrolled subscribers for time and cost optimization (low bid, time to completion).
The Portal operator promotes and markets the ThruDispatch service to potential job submitter, providing no or low-cost tools that enable more effective management of the dispatch load. This may occur via a Web-based interface, or common MS-Office tools, like Outlook or Excel.
The ThruDispatch operator will charge a monthly subscription fee to the mobile workers; most are Nextel subscribers. submitter may not be charged for work pushed into the submittal queue, but are billed for the actual work order by the mobile worker, or by the Portal as a value-added service to the mobile subscriber.
The ThruDispatch portal will use sophisticated work flow and load scheduling logic to select a destination mobile subscriber in order to service the work order. Geo-location, schedule load optimization, and time vs. route completion algorithms, are some of the proposed methods.
The Portal operator will also have ancillary revenue streams, such as advertising to the mobile handset, layers of dispatch tools for remote fleet management, and special services for dispatch overflow fulfillment for centralized corporate fleets.
ThruDispatch is named for the way work orders flow through the portal, and to the recipient, as opposed to central dispatch, in which a live dispatcher handles each call in the predominant mode of mobile fleet management.”
I created an open dispatch system that included a fax to Nextel gateway while working as a systems designer at an automobile auction. Those familiar with cell phone handset dispatching know that the only available solutions are ‘central dispatch’; systems that are manned by your dispatchers and send to your fleet phones – there is currently no Web 2.0 style open dispatch system where small-time operators can pay a small monthly fee and have anyone submit to the system.
It all in the following documents: and I know that few of us have time to read, but consider…there are at least hundreds of thousands of independent servicers on the Nextel network that fall under small, mobile service worker – with my surveys showing an eager willingness to try such a service at 19.00 bux a month for open dispatch services, even 15-30k subscribers would be a very comfortable business.
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