Wirral Partnership Homes

Delivering excellent service with vehicle tracking

Wirral Partnership Housing, one of the largest Registered Social Landlords in the North of England, was keen to make cost and time savings on field service activity as part of a broader transitional change programme.

To help identify business processes which offered opportunities for cost and efficiency savings, Navman Wireless vehicle tracking was introduced across the fleet. With a property portfolio of more than 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 but 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 against unwarranted criticism.”

WPH opted for Navman Wireless vehicle tracking, as the company not only successfully fulfilled the supplier criteria but were highly recommended.

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 and management. “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,” says Andy.

“We started by clearly stating the benefits – 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. 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 get buy in from our drivers.”

Putting theory into practice

With customer service levels a key measurement for WPH, the organisation needed to understand 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 used. Our electricians were losing quite a lot of time going to suppliers, so we arranged for the electricians to have access to more stock in their vehicles. The effect was savings on time and fuel.”

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 more than 90 per cent. Andy continues: “customer confidence has improved on top of satisfaction and the volume of appointments we make has also increased. 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. It provides WPH with a raft of useful management information which helps make better use of the technicians’ time. This has contributed towards significant efficiency savings of more than £100,000 in the last financial year."