AMCS

Kerry County Council

Kerry “Pay As You Go” Project

In October 2006, Kerry County Council launched a new project to provide the public with a new method of electronic waste payment in the Kerry region. As AMCS already had the Routeman product on several customer sites, AMCS responded to the Kerry tender and were successful by being awarded the project to participate in the development of this new initiative to replace the paper tagging system that was currently in operation. Kerry County Council audited their Customer database by chipping all of their bins in their region which were matched with an account number, a name and address.

Kerry County Council installed RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology in all their trucks that once the bin is picked up, will identify a customer’s bin and communicate back to the Waste server through GPRS technology and link it to the customer’s account as indicated below.

Figure 1 – Collection Process Flow.

AMCS in conjunction with PayZone, provided all KCC customers with a swipe card which was linked to the customers account in the Routeman Product platform. Consumers will be able to top-up their account by using the swipe card in the retail channel known as ‘PayZone’. Once topped-up in advance, the bin is lifted, if not in credit, the bin is not lifted by using the AMCS technology on the KCC vehicle. This whole process is automated and does not need Administration intervention. Please refer to the top-up process through to the bin being lifted and account debit in the diagram below.

Figure 2 – Top-up Process Flow

A file detailing the transactions in the shops are made available every 2 hours to the AMCS technology so that user’s accounts can be topped up within the Routeman database product. The goal of the software was to:

• Allow Kerry County Council to use a “Pay As You Go” Waste Service
• Enable the Identification and Tracking of Bins
• Enable Credit Control on User accounts
• Automate stopping of lifts and warnings on low credit accounts
• Remove the Administration overheads of a manual system
• Prevent fraud and bad debts

ACMS further extended their product portfolio to include such functionality as:

• A Phone in option to check a customers balance
• A phone in option to make payments.
• A Customer Self Help Web page

o Customer details summary
o View transaction / Lifts / Balances
o Make a payment
o Make a request – new bin, etc

• Customer Relationship Management System
• Automated texting option for the Waste Management Operator

o Low credit
o Change of day (Bank Holiday) etc.

This project was kicked off in October 2006. AMCS developed, tested and delivered the new software as well as rolling out the project (installing the trucks, chipping, scanning and delivering bins, data analysis, software install and training) within the budget and timeframe.

The project went live in Feb 5th 2007 and has proved to be a huge success since. This is proven with another 7 customers installing and implementing the Pay-As-You-Go Waste Service and 2009 looking very promising.