C F ROBERTS, one of the UK construction industry’s leading providers of electrical and mechanical services, has chosen long-term Business Car Manager partner, Fleet Alliance, to help manage its 140 vehicles.
The company runs a wide range of cars and vans from Ford, VW and Mercedes for its contract managers and engineers. All vehicles are kept for three years or 90,000 miles – which based on previous experience, is the most cost-effective replacement cycle.
There were three reasons for C F Roberts’ switch to Fleet Alliance.
1. Cost effective vehicle selection
Competitive tendering provided by Fleet Alliance produces savings of 8-10% in terms of acquisition costs – by selecting the most cost-effective vehicle on behalf of the client. It is expected that this approach will save C F Roberts hundreds of thousands of pounds over the three-year vehicle contracts.
2. Online fleet management
Fleet Alliance has implemented a comprehensive online fleet management system, known as e-fleet, to allow complete interrogation of any aspect of the company’s vehicle operation. It can handle the company’s entire workforce and is accessible from anywhere in the world, 24 hours a day.
C F Roberts finance director, Matthew Thompson, said: “We were previously using spreadsheets to manage our fleet but we found these error-prone and too easily corrupted.
“By switching the fleet onto the e-fleet platform, we can now provide an accurate record of all vehicles on the fleet, their mileages, service intervals and driver details.”
The online fleet management system also uses alerts, to highlight when a vehicle is approaching its contract mileage or when services are due. Thompson also admitted that the alerts generated by the system were the single most useful feature.
