Managing contracts within Novus presents authorities with several benefits, including improving quality of data, increasing efficiency, and improving the accuracy of passenger information. In this session, Essex County Council revealed how their team has been using this functionality, and explained how other authorities can do the same.

Within Novus, any number of trips, and part trips, can be associated to any number of contracts. Publicity such as maps and timetables can then be created automatically, saving staff time and ensuring passengers receive up to date and accurate information.

Essex’s Tony Brown described how using contracts in Novus has enabled his team to provide clearer route and timetable information to prospective bidders at the contract specification stage, and to present such information in an accurate format.

At the start of the process, Essex spoke to their contracts team about how tenders were undertaken, and together they identified some inconsistencies. They then took part in a Trapeze workshop last year and have since developed their contracting process.

Tony said: “We have been working with Trapeze for around about 20 years and moved to Novus-FX five years ago. We have found that one of the key things for adding value to our data was contracts and it was quickly identifiable as we were seeing some duplications.

“Since last year we have been working side by side with our contracts team have been able to avoid this duplication, which was a main goal for us, alongside using contractual information more in the future.”