By providing a fully EU compliant pre-tendered procurement process, Buying Solutions framework agreements deliver significant savings in public sector procurement time and effort, while providing buyers access to proven suppliers and best value services.
 
This new framework agreement brings the additional benefit of covering both consultancy and delivery services – which would previously have involved two procurement processes.

Alastair O’Brien, Public Sector Business director at Real Time, said: “Public sector is a strategic market for us and being a Buying Solutions Supplier means that our services are made easily available to public sector organisations throughout the UK.

“At Real Time, we fully appreciate the drive by the public sector to strive for cost efficiency while continuing to innovate and, by qualifying, we are underlining our commitment to providing first class services and value for money to this key area of the UK’s economy.”

“Our ICT Consultancy and Delivery Services framework agreement is available to all organisations across the public sector and the diversity of organisations keen to take advantage of the benefits it provides is extremely well demonstrated by the range of customers that used Real Time’s services under the previous framework agreement.” says Joan Murray, category director of Buying Solutions.

She adds: “I am confident that this contract will bring exceptional new opportunities, especially with the addition of Application Consultancy and Delivery Services to the scope of the framework agreement.”

Under development
In another specialism Real Time is to turn university research in advanced voice analytics into a commercial application  which could changes to business travel. Its FirstPass mobile boarding system is on Austrian Airlines and its RT Queue Bluetooth tracking system  beginning to help airports such as Luton and Frankfurt monitor passenger flow and queues in real time.

But the company is continuing to innovate with two new airline check-in systems in the pipeline, one being trailed now, the other six months away in development. Alaistair Deacon, Real Time's CTO, said these could bring fundamental changes to the way business travellers operate.

He said: "One of the issues with the basic mobile boarding pass is you still have to go online using the browser on your iPhone or PDA and interact with an airline's website. That requires you as a user to go to the airline to get that boarding pass. The airline is quite passive in the process."



According to a recent survey by consultants PhoCusWright, seven out of ten business travellers now have a smartphone, be it a BlackBerry, iPhone or PDA. But three out of ten travellers still do not, and without an effective mobile browser, are unable to access airline mobile ‘micro-sites' to check-in.
Deacon says: "Essentially, rather than an airline waiting for a passenger to come to them to get his boarding pass, Austrian Airlines can go out directly to the user by text message."

The system automatically assigns a seat number to a passenger and then texts  the details. The users can confirm they are happy with the seat, and check-in is complete. Deacon says in theory  it could take just three clicks to complete a check-in. Boarding barcode can then be sent to the phone and picked up when network coverage improves.

Real Time is  working with one leading Scottish university and its research into advanced voice analytics. The system, six months away in development, takes advantage of the mobile device.as " a natural language processor which takes away the need to press any buttons," said Deacon. Real Time's product is aimed at natural language interaction where a user could ask any number of things. In theory  conversing naturally with what is essentially an automated computer system.

The voice system, while improving on a low tech use for mobiles, also takes advantage of multimedia applications and new high-bandwidth download speeds. The use of specific, multimedia information targeted at users according to their location is one important development in mobile technology which looks set to reshape business travel.

 "It's giving you an actual dialogue ... that also allows us to push information directly to the handset. For example automatically bring up the terminal map alongside menu and restaurant reviews ... pushed to your handset in real-time as you have this dialogue." says Deacon.

Mobile browsing to check-in was seen as a step forward from having to speak to an operator.I mproving what is basically voice recognition could be an important example to the travel industry of a product that will qualify new and important university research with a practical, real world application.

Deacon  argues that the new text and voice check-in systems could spell fundamental changes in the way business travellers think.

But he said there was a natural limit to what airlines could achieve by exploiting mobile technology. The technology is in place for airlines to offer upgrades, up-sell seats and award and redeem frequent flyer points through mobile devices.

"While airlines can all have these ‘whizzy' functions, it has to boil down to what the passenger would actually use and what is sensible,"  Deacon said.  The two products, text-based and voice check-in are examples of the industry's continuing attempts to capitalise on the growing mobile market.