The Sherlock philosophy is simple: working with our customers to create solutions that make an impact. We don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to technology.
Customers shouldn’t have to change their processes or find workaround solutions because their software doesn’t fulfil the needs of their business.
That’s why we have built Sherlock: a taxi dispatch system which responds to the genuine needs of the industry. Our solution is flexible, scalable, configurable and continuously updated to keep delivering you new features as the market changes.
We’ll tell you more about our story below, but first let’s take a look at our team and expertise.
Paul Lacey
Managing Director
Sherlock’s parent company, Haulmont Technology, was co-founded by Paul Lacey in 2008 and Paul remains our Managing Director today. Paul’s background is taxi; prior to launching Haulmont, he worked at Addison Lee as project lead when they revolutionised their taxi dispatch software in the early 2000s.
Mike Tobin
Business Unit Director
Mike is the Sherlock Business Unit Director and leads our commercial strategy focusing on sales and marketing. Mike has over 25 years of experience in the industry. Having also started his career at Addison Lee, Mike spent 15 years in a variety of ops roles and was part of the team involved in the adoption of Addison Lee’s bespoke Shamrock system. Mike then took his skills and experience to Green Tomato Cars, another leading London fleet, where he oversaw a full system dispatch replacement. This experience has put Mike in the best position to lead Sherlock’s strategy and allowed us to develop a customer-first ethos in which we work consultatively with customers to ensure they are getting the most out of technology to drive their businesses forward.
Dmitry Odobescu
Head of Product
Dmitry has been with Sherlock since day one, working as a Customer Project Manager and leading the Product team. His many years of experience have seen him work with clients across the globe and gain insight into differing market needs. As a result, Dmitry has led his team of developers to create unique features which have made Sherlock a truly global dispatch solution.
Adam Ross
Technical Sales & Implementation Manager
Adam is our Technical Sales & Implementation Manager, responsible for making sure migrations to Sherlock Taxi go smoothly. Adam spent a decade working at Green Tomato Cars in a variety of operations roles before joining Haulmont. At Green Tomato Cars, Adam was responsible for the company’s transition to a new dispatch system, communicating the business’ requirements to the dispatch provider and liaising with their tech teams to ensure the technology met the company’s needs. This means Adam is in a unique position as someone who has managed a full system implementation from both sides of the fence!
Our team have held senior roles at some of London’s largest taxi companies including Addison Lee which places us in the unique position of having real-world experience of the industry and genuine operational understanding.
This means that we have custom-built our software in response to genuine needs in the industry. Our solution is flexible, scalable, configurable and continuously updated to keep delivering you new features as the market changes. Sherlock Taxi is developed by Haulmont Technology which was co-founded in 2008 by our Managing Director, Paul Lacey. Prior to launching Haulmont, Paul worked at Addison Lee as project lead when they revolutionised their taxi dispatch software in the early 2000s. The goal for Addison Lee was to develop a taxi solution which could automate most bookings to increase fleet efficiency and enable rapid scalability and growth.
Paul and the Addison Lee team were originally working with another software provider when they realised that actually, there could be a better way to deliver the project goals. Paul and his business partner, Alex Zotkin created Haulmont Technology. They built Addison Lee’s Shamrock system and the world’s most advanced auto-allocator which can automate up to 100% of jobs. A decade later, Haulmont remains Addison Lee’s exclusive taxi software partner.
In 2011, the team began working on Sherlock Taxi, the sister solution to Addison Lee’s Shamrock system and we now support taxi fleets across the UK, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.
The Sherlock business unit is now one part of Haulmont Technology, a company which employs over 600 staff in various locations. Sherlock’s team has grown since its inception and now comprises 60 staff, many of whom have worked for the business for multiple years. We are proud to be an excellent employer that retains staff who as a result, have excellent knowledge and exposure to various customers across the globe.
Some of the highlights of Sherlock Taxi through the years!
Sherlock Taxi is owned and developed in-house by Haulmont Technology, the company who developed Addison Lee’s proprietary Shamrock system and continue to support Addison Lee today. Haulmont is private owned by seven shareholders and develops a range of mobile workforce management and business automation software systems.
Having partnered with Addison Lee in the early 2000s to develop their revolutionary taxi management and dispatch system, Haulmont were approached by other forward-thinking fleets looking for the right technology to enable scale. Sherlock Taxi was born as the white label taxi dispatch solution available for the wider market.
To this day, we remain Addison Lee’s dispatch partner and they retain a development team working with them daily. Addison Lee owns a minority shareholding in Haulmont.
We work with start-ups looking to build from the ground up with support from a knowledgeable technology partner with real-world experience through to established fleets with several thousand vehicles.
A truly global solution, we have clients across the UK and Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. We are adept at meeting the challenges of operating within different geographical markets through both our configurable settings within Sherlock Taxi and, our ability to develop and iterate the product. For example, we have integrated with local databases in African territories where Google Maps is ‘patchy’ and developed ‘right to left’ language support for customers in countries where Arabic is spoken.
Sherlock Taxi is a flexible solution which can sit in your infrastructure as you want it to which means you can host in servers onsite or through the cloud. If you choose the cloud, we have partners we work with that you can use or you can find your own – the choice is yours.
We understand that the thought of moving to a new system is headache inducing – but it doesn’t have to be. You don’t need to spend hours and hours entering data into your new system as we can migrate it over for you. We can move customer, driver/vehicle profiles and even bookings to make that transition as smooth, seamless and stress-free as possible. We will only migrate consistent and accurate data that is actually useful to your business.
We are already integrated with several service providers including telephony, SMS, credit card payment gateways and flight information companies. We don’t charge you to use integrated third parties – you just need to agree the commercials directly with the provider.
Yes, Sherlock Taxi is already fully integrated with various telephony providers and we are happy to discuss bespoke integrations for you as well.
No, Sherlock Taxi is a true Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution. Our licence fee model means you pay a monthly fee per driver to licence your own instance of the system which covers the cost of all updates. We deliver features on a continuous basis with the development team providing over 700 new features a year on average including 'big ticket' items such as new apps, our account management portal and support for electric vehicles. With Sherlock you are getting a genuinely innovative solution at a price you can afford – no hidden fees, no hidden clauses, just true innovation as standard.
