Following a 40-vehicle trial of Masternaut’s web-based tracking tool, Knowsley Housing Trust has now deployed Masternaut across its full fleet of 150 vans. KHT reports a 15 per cent improvement in times for its responsive repairs and a 5 per cent reduction in ‘no access’ rates.
The Masternaut service gives KHT immediate access to real-time information and activity reports which underpin the management of its workers, as well as helping to resolve problems around gaining access to tenants’ properties.
Paul Worthington, assistant director of maintenance, Knowsley Housing Trust, said, “Now we have totally transparent information about all our vehicles; we can see exactly where each vehicle and engineer is at any time simply by logging onto the Masternaut site. I can even use my own PDA to do this when I am away from the office.
“This real-time information allows us to prove whether or not an engineer called at the customer’s home, and also when he left. This helps to resolve a lot of customer relationship issues as we now have real-time proof of the location of our engineers at any time. As a result, we have already seen a 5 per cent drop in our ‘no access’ rate, which reduces our costs and shows customers that our service levels are improving.”
As well as the repairs team, KHT has also made the Masternaut service available to other internal customers, enabling them to see exactly where the service staff are; KHT reports that this is proving useful when investigating issues such as bogus engineers calling on elderly customers.
KHT’s fleet manager, Carl Woods, added “We had a vehicle stolen recently, but we recovered it within minutes because we were able to direct the police to its precise location using Masternaut. This reduced the inconvenience to us from having a vehicle out of use due to theft.”
Long-term results at Luminus Group
After three years of using the Masternaut service, Luminus Group has reported productivity gains of up to 15 per cent. Luminus is currently using Masternaut to generate reports for tracking start and finish times and monitoring driving speed, with the aim of encouraging better driving and reducing fuel costs. The on-screen tracking is also proving useful as managers can view vehicle movements in real-time and see when the engineers have returned home.
Sharon Grant, procurement manager, Luminus Group, said, “By using any internet-enabled PC or PDA, we can see exactly where our vehicles are at any time and this also allows us to direct additional staff who are nearby should a colleague require back up. We have also used the system to dispute road traffic fines as we can prove that our vehicle was not in the area on the day that the fine was issued.”
