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Turning up the heat on fleet security ...
Insulation
business InsuHeat is protecting its company vehicles with a little
help from Competitive Tracking.
Fleet management technology from
Competitive Tracking is streamlining an insulation company’s
operation and is at the core of its security arrangements to
safeguard productivity.
Insuheat Limited, based at
Willenhall in the heart of the West Midlands, offers services
ranging from cavity wall and loft insulation to cavity cleaning,
roof slate ventilation and draught proofing. The company’s
20-strong workforce serves residential homeowners and social housing
throughout the Midlands region.
Every vehicle in its fleet
houses high-tech cavity blowing machines, which are purchased from
new, and cost in excess of £13,000 each. These pieces of equipment
are key to InsuHeat’s operation and its service to customers.
“All of our vehicles are
locked up within our secure unit at night, and over weekends, but we
had two break-ins when we launched the company more than three years
ago,” said Mark Burrows, Insuheat Limited’s managing director.
“If one of our vans is stolen,
we could pick up a new one the next day. It would take eight weeks
to take delivery of a new cavity blowing machine however –
valuable output time we could ill-afford to lose.”
Insuheat needed to find a
solution to its security concerns and turned to Competitive
Tracking, having previously invested in a competitor’s telematics
technology that failed to meet management expectations.
“Because our previous system
didn’t use GPRS, which enables live vehicle-tracking, we could
only access information from one site – our office,” Mark
continues. “Operating it proved to be a complicated and
problematic process.
“By contrast, the multifaceted
Navman system we’ve installed on the advise of Competitive
Tracking allows us to monitor and message our fleet from any PC at
any location, as soon as we’ve logged in with our username and
password.”
Competitive Tracking used Navman
technology to provide Windows-based
OnLineAVL software system to send job details, directions or
messages to staff using GPS satellite technology, the Vodafone GPRS
network and the World Wide Web.
Tailored fleet management and
vehicle tracking solutions are provided by Competitive Tracking to
meet the specific needs of individual companies. In the case of
Insuheat, the software system has been used to create a geofence –
a defined geographic boundary – around the company’s Willenhall
head office and every time an Insuheat vehicle enters or exits the
premises, a message alert is sent to the managing director’s
mobile.
“Our insurance premiums have
fallen considerably and when I go home at night, I’ve now got
peace of mind knowing that the company’s vans are stationary and
where they should be,” said Mark.
In addition to bolstering the
company’s security, the messaging system has put an end to the
need for continual, expensive and time consuming, phone calls
between the office and the workforce on the road.
“Before we installed
Competitive Trackings fleet management technology, the demands of
our operation meant that one of our phone lines was constantly busy.
This line has now been freed up and I can expect to see considerable
cost savings when we next sit down to analyse our business expenses,
as well as increased customer satisfaction due to the phone not
being engaged.”
In a bid to maintain quality
standards for Insuheat’s customers, and to monitor the efficiency
of the cavity blowing machines, Competitive Tracking has fitted a
conex unit to this equipment. These register details of when a
machine is being operated and for how long, and feed this
information back to the office.
“An average job to install
cavity wall insulation will take an hour and a half, and it will
normally take no more than a minute to fill one hole in the wall. If
a machine blows for a shorter period of time, I can pick up the
phone and find out why this is the case and make sure the machinery
is working as it should be,” Mark added.
“It could be that a house or
its cavities are smaller than average, but the system allows us to
accurately monitor the activity and ensure we deliver service
excellence, the system also shows me how many holes have been
drilled and filled in the property this helps in proving to our
customers that we have delivered the excellence they expect from us
and gives me the advantage of becoming accountable to my customers.
All of our staff are qualified, experienced employees and they have
been quick to appreciate the benefits that the Competitive Tracking
system offers them during their working day. They also recognise the
added value to the company as a whole, which is passed on to
customers and employees alike.”
The system’s high level of
functionality has been designed to be as intuitive as possible for
its users and, as such, is being operated by Insuheat’s employers
and employees with a minimum of effort.
“In the case of our previous
system, we were still scratching our heads after two years of using
it. By contrast, we were up to speed with Competitive Trackings
fleet management and vehicle tracking after just a few weeks.
“It has already paid for
itself by improving efficiency, boosting productivity and cutting
costs; in hindsight I wonder how we ever managed without it.”
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