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It helps us to be very responsive and always improve our customer service.
Van and car tracking
Apex Lifts are based in Sidcup, Kent, and have been operating throughout London and the South of England since 1970. It is the largest family owned independent lift manufacturer and maintenance company in the London region.
Apex Lifts service, repair, refurbish, manufacture and install lifts to meet the requirements of European legislation, British Standards and also the expectations and demands of a wide range of customers. With its in-house manufacturing facilities, Apex can deal with installation and service contracts to the highest levels and manufacture high-quality bespoke lifts. Apex Lifts, which 2011/2012’s turnover reached just under £14m, currently employ 125 people and operate a mixed car and van fleet of 66 vehicles.
Cutting costs and saving time
Apex Lifts have been cutting costs and saving valuable time by tracking their fleet with the award-winning Quartix system.
Originally aiming to improve their Health & Safety, notably for any lone workers, Apex Lifts started fitting the Quartix vehicle tracking system in 2007 and have since gradually been installing the tracking systems to the remainder of their fleet. Since there was an element of lone working associated with some engineers, it was important to know where their employees were at all times and to be able to see in real-time what jobs they were completing. In addition to the safety aspect, Apex Lifts also use the tracking system to monitor employees’ time sheets.
Today, the tracking system is used extensively across all departments. The call desk co-ordinators use the live tracking throughout the day to see where the engineers are and utilise the Address Search to monitor the engineers in the closest proximity to the breakdown site. This is also essential to apply a swift response to passenger ‘trap-ins’.
The live tracking on Google Maps includes Map, Satellite and Street views as well as live traffic information, enabling their co-ordinators to plan trips and despatch jobs efficiently. “It helps us to be very responsive and always improve our customer service,” says Mick Holderness, Production Director at Apex Lifts.
“If we have an engineer who is 20 miles away and one who is 2 miles away, we need to send the right engineer to the job. We want to reduce the time someone is stuck in a lift so it is crucial to despatch the closest vehicle to a site.”
Vehicle route maps
The Quartix Route Maps, which display each trip with colour-coded speed symbols, and the Route Charts, which highlight all trips taken over a day or a week, are also used by Apex Lifts to optimise itineraries: “We operate in an increasingly competitive environment so we have to reduce our costs to cater for that. We analyse the routes taken and shuffle them around to make it more economically viable – this helps us reduce our fuel consumption and save time,” says Mick Holderness.
Other key features used by Apex Lifts are the timesheets and reports which provide extensive detail of the vehicles’ activity. The mileage reports for example are checked by supervisors to ensure private mileage is accurately recorded: “We check the mileage reports as it is now our company’s responsibility to report on private mileage to the Inland Revenue,” explains Mick Holderness.
Apex Lifts are “really happy with the Quartix system” and are fitting trackers into each new vehicle as they replace them. With improved customer service, savings made on fuel costs, and a peace of mind gained through greater legal and Health & Safety compliance, the benefits brought by the Quartix vehicle tracking system are helping Apex Lifts continue to develop and sustain their place as the leading lift company in the London region.
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