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“There are so many positives we can see with Quartix telematics. Without a doubt, businesses benefit from everything they get from the Quartix system. The rewards far outweigh the investment.”
With 704 vehicles tracked with Quartix, telecommunications giant Circet and its UK National Fleet Manager Lawrence McPherson, has a massive daily job supervising drivers in multiple depots across the UK. His long-term goal is to develop his drivers’ skills and, in the process, reduce the costs and carbon emissions associated with bad driving.
A deep dive into driver performance
“The biggest challenge is making sure we know where all vehicles are and that they have been driven as safely as possible and that our risk is as low as we can manage,” says Lawrence. As a fleet manager, it’s helped us, excuse the pun, drive down any kind of poor scoring or poor driving habits through being able to see the driver’s score.”
The Quartix vehicle tracking system assigns drivers a daily driving score to each of Circet’s drivers, based on their speed, acceleration and braking indexes. These scores are colour-coded and make it easy for Lawrence to see who is driving well and who needs coaching.
“We manage 600 drivers. We look at all the scores for the last month, looking to find the drivers in red, the poor scorers. We’ll have conversations with them and the good drivers will be rewarded. And it’s actually helping the drivers, too, in understanding how they can improve their driving. And,” he adds, “better drivers means lower insurance premiums.”
Focusing on speed
Although speed is a big part of driver performance, the Quartix system allows Lawrence to narrow in on this one specific element that contributes the most to vehicle wear and tear and potential accidents. With Quartix’s Safe Speed Database integrated into all driving style reports, Lawrence knows if his drivers are operating within legal speed limits, but also if they are driving safely.
Evaluating driving behaviour by just using the legal speed limit sometimes isn’t enough. Often, the safe speed for a road may be well below the legal limit. This is particularly true on rural roads where data shows a high rate of fatal accidents despite very few drivers exceeding the legal limit on such roads.
Quartix provides a better picture using the average speed drivers use on a particular road versus the ‘legal’ speed. With this information, Lawrence can coach his drivers on safer driving, potentially saving lives.
Lawrence says, “The drivers understand that, although the speed limit for the road might be 60 miles an hour, if there’s a sharp right-hand corner, they shouldn’t be doing 60 miles an hour. So, it’s all about education.”
Read more about our Safe Speed Database.
Looking at the bigger picture
“Quartix isn’t just a fleet tool; the system has options that can help our whole company Lawrence goes on. “We use it to check parking claims and mileage when reviewing our fuel spend. Our operations teams use it for many different reasons.”
Quartix makes it easy for Circet to analyse their accumulated vehicle tracking data by generating simple to use reports that help make sense of mileage and fuel costs, while reducing administrative tasks. Not only does this make them more efficient and productive, it can actually have the added benefit of improving their customer service.
“Quartix is key to improving driver safety, but we also like knowing if a driver hasn’t reported for their next job. We can use the system to make sure that if a customer is expecting us at a certain time, we’ll be there at that time. If we’re not, we can investigate and find out why.”
Reducing their carbon footprint
Not to be overlooked is Quartix’s ability to help Lawrence and Circet reduce their impact on the environment, something that is becoming an increasing concern to all businesses, no matter the size of their fleet. With Quartix, it’s easy to see where emissions can be reduced, either through curbing excessive idling or eliminating unnecessary driving altogether.
“We have reports we look at to monitor our CO2 output—we can share that with our customers and let them know that we are a company with the welfare of the environment on our minds.”
“There are so many positives we can see with Quartix telematics,” Lawrence says. “Without a doubt, businesses benefit from everything they get from the Quartix system. The rewards far outweigh the investment.”
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