The effect of technologies on the efficiency of services with an application in Turkey

Abstract

Technological innovations make it easy to offer services and increase business productivity. In this article a technological innovation that was devised by Istanbul Municipality, a service association, is presented. With this innovation, Istanbul Municipality aims at modernising its public transportation services, wishing to offer high quality service to the people of Istanbul. This innovation increased the value of service that led to organisational effectiveness and productivity. Municipality management provides 8 different public transportation vehicles (private shuttle services are also available) which are; bus, sea-bus, steamboat, tunnel, tram, nostalgic tram, train, and subway. 25 different tickets have been used and current application causes people to waste their time and municipality to work inefficiently and counterfeit tickets are the main cause of financial losses of the municipality. After this experience municipality management decided to issue a unique ticket that would be acceptable in all public transportation vehicles. In 1994 the management issued a new smart ticket called "Akbil" and ran a trial in some transportation vehicles. Akbil is a kind of pre-coded and ciphered electrical ticket coated with steel. It runs on a lithium battery and uses RAM memory called TOM that is made of an electrical circuit. It lets the user recharge it if needed. Common use of this device started in 1995 in sea-bus, followed by the use in trains, tunnel, tram and subway in 1996. In 1999 people started to use it in all community transportation vehicles run by Istanbul municipality.