CHERRY VALLEY, N.Y. - Two important motorcoach industry software suppliers, Relational Bus Systems Inc. of Cherry Valley, and Ron Turley Associates of Phoenix, have joined forces to provide an intelligent integration of their systems.

Relational Bus Systems is North America's largest supplier of motorcoach tour and charter management software and Ron Turley Associates is a leading provider of vehicle maintenance systems.

"About two years ago we made the strategic decision that the vehicle maintenance module of the RBS charter management system would be the only piece that we would not convert to a Windows platform and graphical-user interface," explained RBS President Bill Harnett. "There was just too much development money being put into this segment by software companies that service trucking, transit and school bus providers for a company that specialized in the motorcoach industry to compete effectively.

"We surveyed hundreds of our UMA- and IMG-member customers to find out what maintenance software they were using and what their experiences were," Harnett said. "The clear choice was the Ron Turley Associates fleet management system.

"Unlike many vehicle maintenance systems, their experience with motorcoach, school bus and transit fleets meant you did not have to run your shop like a truck repair depot to use their software.

"And, like RBS, the Ron Turley Associates dedication to customer service, after-sales support and frequent program updates told us this was a company we would like to do business," Harnett added.

Among the points of integration between the RBS and RTA systems is the ability to send the RTA system "anticipated travel miles" for vehicles scheduled for the next 1, 3, 6 or 12 days to the RTA preventive-maintenance report.

This allows the shop to more intelligently schedule preventative maintenance. The RTA system can send actual cost of maintenance to the RBS post- departure reconciliation module to more accurately access charter profitability and contribution to nondirect costs.

"We are continuing to talk to our customers about other points of integration with the RBS system," says Rich Goodrich of Ron Turley. "For example, we are currently looking at using our vehicle out-of-service alarm to automatically unschedule a vehicle in RBS that is down and block it from use in the RBS dispatch system until it is repaired.

For more information, contact Harnett at (800) 448-7001, or Goodrich at (800) 279-0549, or visit their Web sites: www.rbs2000.com or www.rtafleet.com.