Who are JK Vehicles
JK Vehicles are a European wide vehicle logistics company who move vehicles, both old and new for their customers. Drivers can be in numerous vehicles per day, driving them the length and breadth of the UK and further afield into Europe.
As a specialist logistics firm, unique in the market place, there existed no off the shelf solution to meet the needs.
JK Vehicles needed a solution that could handle all the nuances of their business, be able to work ‘out in the field’ but also provide detailed oversight from their Head Office.
Having worked with a system previously JK Vehicles had far outgrown its capabilities and it was having a negative impact, rather than positive.
The Challenge to Synergi Tech
The challenge for us was to ensure that the drivers out and about every day had a really easy to use application, from which they could get their work information, and submit information back to easily and quickly.
Furthermore, the Planning Team in the office needed to not only see exactly what was going on at any one point, but also when planning the next days work, have all the tools and information at their fingertips so that planning became much smoother.
Tying the solution into the billing and accounting side too remained a key component, and with the requirement to retain Sage 50 Desktop as their accounting platform, we also needed to ensure data transfer between the Application and Sage was possible.
“Synergi Tech Ltd are very sympathetic to our needs and have built our Application to suit our business entirely.”
John O'Malley, Founder
The Solution from Synergi
The Synergi Tech team spent many hours with JK Vehicles, in their planning office, seeing how that part of the operation worked. Our Solutions specialists then spent time mapping out the data, logic and workflows that would see our Developers able to make a start on the build of the Application.
We started with ensuring all the data entities, such as Customers, Contract Rates, Jobs, Drivers, Vehicles were all built with all the relevant information, and then worked on all the supporting user interface to manage all the entities.
For the planning system, we worked heavily with the Google Maps API and built in live updating, route and distance calculations, estimated time, and status filters so that the Planning Team could, at a glance toggle between scheduled jobs and jobs still requiring to be planned in and allocated.
Once the jobs are all planned and allocated, automated SMS text messages are sent to the drivers with quick secure links for them to login to their Driver portal and download all the information.
Once a vehicle is collected, the driver can upload condition reports, photos and also capture a signature. This information is fed back instantly into the application and also for the office team to view in real time.
We also built an Android application that is built into all of the drivers phone which accurately reports the drivers’ location every few minutes. This allows the office to see where drivers are, and if there are delays on the route, forewarning customers, which improves the customer satisfaction and relation no end.
“The support from Synergi Tech is excellent and working with them is always a pleasure and never a chore.”
John O'Malley, Founder
Just a few of the benefits that a custom designed software solution can bring to your business
Unique to your business - Implementing business software often means adapting to fit the product whereas a custom application is written specifically for the business, streamlining and improving your systems.
Cloud-based - The power of the cloud is that it removes the overhead of security and server maintenance, leaving you free to spend your time and effort where it matters most - in your own business.
Increased capacity, reduced costs - by removing data duplication and streamlining order processing, capacity is instantly improved reducing initial costs and deferring costs of future salary. This provides a very rapid return on investment.
Summary
With night time planning sometimes taking 5-6 hours, and manually messaging drivers alone taking up a further couple of hours every day, the automation and time saving that our application has provided has been huge. The SMS notification messaging alone is now saving 2 hours every single day as they are automated, sent and tracked all within the application interface.
JK Vehicles have rolled out the new application to its entire roster of drivers and all jobs are now being started, planned, tracked and managed via the new application, with the invoicing all automated at the end of the process.
Driver time sheets are produced by the system including expenses reimbursement, which is fed straight into the weekly Payroll process.
Extending the system now, we are building a full Customer Portal onto the application which will not only allow JK Vehicles’ customers to load up new jobs themselves, including getting an automated indicative cost, but they will also be able to track in-progress jobs live.