Back Office System SMARTPOS™

SMARTPOS™ is a comprehensive system solution for public transport, for staff- or passenger-operated devices, for paper ticket an/or smart card systems and considers both the frond-end devices and the back office. SMARTPOS™ is a registered trademark of Smart Transit GmbH.

System Modules

Our back office system consists of different modules. These modules fit in each case to the desired front-end functions. Example: A ticketing application on front-end needs the appropriate modules at the back office system. Various modules are available like for example:

• Device Management (software, configuration)
• Device User Management (drivers, sales staff, inspectors)
• Product and Tariff Management
• Ticket Sales, Shift Accounting
• Ticket Inspection, Penalties and Receipts
• Action List, Block List, Hot List Management
• Transit Purse, Debit and Post Paid Management
• Account Based Ticketing (ABT)
• Customer Relationship Management
• Card Management
• Accounting, Clearing House Services
• Tracking and Tracing (ITCS)
• Communication (Vehicle Communication)
• Real-time Passenger Information (RTPI)
• Depot Management
• Process Management
• Monitoring and Alarming
• Data Base Mangement
• Import and Export functionalities
• Standard- or custom-made Interfaces
• Back Office User Management (sales, dispatcher, workshop, administration)
• Multi-Language-Management (any language is possible)
• WWW Interface

Each module contains cross section functions, which guarantee the self-sufficiency and integration ability. The modules provide a defined functionality, a packages of business processes will be adapted optimally to an existing infrastructure, can be used as complete solution or as an addition, can work in an existing system environment and can be adapted flexibly to future changing requirements.

System Implementation and Operation

The Management System can be operated in two ways:

• As in-house solution within the public transport operator’s environment.
• As managed service at a web server operated by Smart Transit.

Browser-based System Access

The access to the back office system is 100% browser-based. This means at the workstations at the transport operator offices no additional application is needed; the back office system can be accessed by any standard Personal Computer, Notebook, Tablet or even a Smartphone by any standard browser like for example Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Edge, Chrome, Safari et cetera.

General System Architecture

Our powerful, reliable and economic system architecture uses:

Software development based on UML;
LAMP architecture;
 - Linux (Server Environment);
 - Apache (Webserver);
 - MySQL (database);
 - PHP.
Interfaces XML, CSV, Excel and others
Data Base Systems: Standard MySQL; Option MS SQL Server™, Oracle™
Clients: HTML-Browser.

Open Standard Architecture

We support open standards, like:

Open Platforms (Linux, MySQL, Microsoft®, Oracle®™, MySQL, HTML, Java ...);
Smart Card Standards (ISO 7816, ISO 14443, VDV, ITSO, RKF, IOPTA …);
Industry Standards (Mifare™, SAP™ …);
Communication Standards (TCP/IP, LAN, WLAN, GSM, GPRS …);
Payment Standards (ZKA™, EMV™, EP2™, Chip&Pin …);
National Transit Standards (VDV-KA, OV, Mobib, ITSO, RKF, …).

At the following some more detailed information.

The entire system consists of the front-end devices, the back office system and the operation and support we provide. We operate the system in close cooperation with our customer over the whole system lifetime. We give our customers the full support of how the system is operated optimally.

Our back office system can be connected to different front-end devices at the same time, such as vehicle computers, validators, stationary sales systems or portable inspection devices; only one common back office system is used.

The device management application concerns the front-end devices as well as the back office system. All our devices are supplied on-line with new software updates and configuration data. The same applies to any kind of transaction data as for example ticket sales or smart card data. This all is done automatically over the air via mobile communication. This makes an easy and fast system administration possible.

The devices are monitoring themselves and their interfaces, and send the system status ongoing to the back office. The devices and the back office status are clearly indicated to the workshop and the system administration by different monitors and lists. Unusual conditions or system failures can be shown on-line or even reported by automatic email messages to the administration or the workshop for example.

Beyond that there are some general functions like for example the process management, the data base management including reporting and import and export functionalities and the back office user management, which allows different access rights to different user groups (sales, dispatcher, workshop, system administration).

The device users can be administrated as well at the back office system. A device user normally must identify himself by an identification (login) and a password, before he has access to the device application. These identifications and passwords are managed at the back office system. The device users can change their initial passwords by their own at the device.

It is possible to create different user groups like for example drivers, kiosk staff, inspectors or system administrators. These user groups can have different access right regarding the different possible front-end device applications.

The vehicle devices have at least two modes for daylight and night operation. The vehicle computer user-interface layout is partially configurable to the wishes of the transport operator. The front-end software is provided usually with the local language.

Usually we offer our back office system as a rented system including security, backups and the interface to the Internet. This means that our customers do not have to buy and operate the back office system hardware by themselves.

Our scalable back office systems are successful in use for more than a decade. We operate small systems with a few dozen devices as well as up to systems with thousand devices with a few hundred thousand transactions per day.

   © Smart Transit GmbH - 2023