Navman Wireless
Wirral Partnership Homes

Delivering Excellent Service

To help in identifying business processes which offered opportunities for cost and efficiency savings, Navman Wireless vehicle tracking was introduced across the fleet and has already played a key role in developing new working practices, generating considerable savings for the organisation.

With a property portfolio of over 13,000 homes, Wirral Partnership Housing (WPH) operates an ongoing maintenance programme requiring a fleet of 129 vehicles and a workforce of 200 technicians.

Answerable to the Housing Corporation, the Government watchdog for social housing providers, high levels of customer service are a must and much emphasis is placed on whether appointments with tenants are kept and if they are on time.

Andy Brown, Transport Manager for WPH explains:

"As an organisation we are extremely transparent in terms of the information we have to provide about our performance and at the same time highly visible within the local community".

"We had been accused of speeding or driving recklessly and had no means of proving our drivers were innocent.Equally there were occasions when we needed to locate our technicians and had no easy means of doing so".

"As such we identified a need for a vehicle tracking system that would enable the organisation to become more efficient in delivering services and would allow us to defend ourselves in the face of any unwarranted criticism of our staff."

WPH was obliged to undertake a competitive tender process to procure the system. It opted for Navman Wireless, as the company successfully fulfilled the supplier criteria and also came highly recommended by another organisation known to WPH.

Keeping drivers in the loop.

With a strong unionised workforce, the introduction of vehicle tracking initially prompted questions about the level of trust between technicians out in their vehicles and the management team seeking to introduce the new technology

"Honesty was the best policy when it came to successfully justifying our plans," says Andy. "Our technicians are represented by three different unions which meant we needed to be very forthcoming in explaining what we hoped to achieve by installing the system."

"We started by clearly stating the benefits -for example better fuel economy, security of the vehicle and stock, proof of attendance at a job and being able to disprove false allegations against our drivers."

"We also made it clear that whilst the information available as a result of the tracking system could be used for disciplinary purposes, it would never be the first port of call. If we had any concerns about a particular individual, there are other ways to find out if they are well founded or not. For WPH, using vehicle tracking as a means of disciplining drivers was simply not a requirement."

"By being upfront about why we wanted the system, it was very straightforward to introduce tracking and to get buy in from our drivers."

Putting theory into practice

With customer service levels a key measurement for WPH, the organisation needed to understand and address trends in the existing processes and service delivery mechanisms.
Geofences were set up around depots, stores and suppliers to monitor the frequency of visits for each technician.

"This gave us a real insight into how our resources were being going to suppliers, so we arranged for the electricians to have access to more stock in their vehicles. The effect of which was fewer trips between jobs, saving time and fuel used."

Investing in peace of mind

By installing the vehicle tracking system, WPH have built on their success and now have a customer service satisfaction rating of over 90%.

Andy continues:"Customer confidence has improved on top of satisfaction and the volume of appointments we make has also increased. Without doubt, the Navman Wireless system has played a significant part in helping us to achieve this."

"The system has proven to be incredibly stable, with no crashes or data loss, which from a management point of view is ideal as we need to have processes we can rely on to effectively manage the business."

"In total," concludes Andy,"The Navman Wireless tracking system provides Wirral Partnership Homes with a raft of useful management information which helps make better use of the technicians time. This has contributed towards significant efficiency savings for the organisation of over £100,000 in the last financial year."

"By being upfront about why we wanted the system, it was very straightforward to introduce tracking and to get buy in from our drivers."