Pivoting collectively towards a sustainable and future-ready journey

Yeap Transport won the Team of the Year - Transportation award at the SBR Management Excellence Awards 2021.

What started out as a bid for a tender became the beginning of an innovative and learning journey for Yeap Transport’s team.

Bus fleet management company Yeap Transport was invited by an existing client to tender for the school’s bus services. They were asked to submit a comprehensive and sustainable transportation proposal in a short two-week window that coincided with the Chinese New Year. The tender exercise drew intense competition from established transport providers.

Despite the tight deadline, it was able to get the whole team together, determined to pivot from its traditional school bus service model to submit a proposal that was sustainability-focused and future-proof by innovating through use of technology and data analytics.

The company demonstrated its capability to improve productivity and punctuality by empowering school administrators, bus crew, riders and parents through the use of its integrated Yeap Transport Management System (YTMS). 

It built on existing in-house solutions and enhanced its offerings with “Anytime, Anywhere” capability that featured cloud-based online transport management systems that track GPS, speed, route and timing of buses. 

The innovation also featured mobile apps that enabled parents to monitor real-time pick-up/drop-off, bus’s location, push-notifications such as delays due to inclement weather or road incidents, and ability to provide feedback on bus crew’s service standards. At the same time, the mobile app can also be used for bus crews to take attendance, submit incidents and send student behavioural feedback.

The proposal also had a customisable key performance indicator dashboard for school administrators’ real-time monitoring of punctuality, incidences and service level compliance.

Yeap Transport also highlighted its environment, social and governance (ESG) initiatives and practices in the proposal. Examples of these included zero-tolerance for engine idling, piloting electric buses and adopting paperless administration, amongst others. 

To ensure that its staff continue to stay relevant, the company established a unit focused on continuous learning. In particular, the team developed Yeap Transport’s Training Arm and Learning Management System offering a wide range of courses for staff, who can attend face-to-face or carry out online learning.

Since many of Yeap’s staff are seniors above 55 years old with limited educational qualifications, the company specifically rolled out a module on “SkillsFuture For Digital Workplace” training to equip them with know-how to use the YTMS and mobile app to serve stakeholders.

In turn, they are digitally enabled to uplift their service standards, possess needed safety knowledge and better equipped to improve productivity.

Such an integrated proposal and smooth collaboration from its multi-functional team have allowed Yeap Transport to win the contract. This feat has also brought recognition to the company, with them being recognised as the recipient of the Team of the Year - Transportation award at the SBR Management Excellence Awards 2021.

“Winning the tender was the beginning of our journey towards innovation  and sustainability. Our team was able to reinvent itself, integrate the offerings as new business norms and execute it with confidence. With this, we hope to drive our ambition in becoming a successful SME leading the way in private transport sustainability,” Adrian Yeap, CEO of Yeap Transport said.