Telematics Case Study: Monitoring Productivity

Founded in 1989 as a regional maintenance service provider, Lane Valente Industries has grown every year by offering the most comprehensive and efficient solutions in retail. Today the company is a leading provider of facility maintenance, project management, and energy services.

Lane Valente caters to high-volume remodels, sending skilled technicians in a company vehicle to provide facilities solutions for plumbing, electrical, HVAC, retail lighting, and refrigeration maintenance.

The Fleet: Lane Valente operates a fleet of 172 units, including vans and bucket trucks.

The Challenge: With a continually expanding fleet, Lane Valente wanted to monitor productivity, including the time it took techs to arrive on the job and time to completion. The company also wanted to monitor unauthorized use of vehicles and ensure the accurate billing of hours and payroll.

The Solution: To address these challenges, Lane Valente turned to a cloud-computing platform that offers visibility into day-to-day fleet operations so it can identify, manage, and improve areas such as driver safety, customer service, back-office administration, fuel use, and fleet efficiency.

The Results: "Since implementing our solution, the fleet has improved driver safety by monitoring mobile worker status and reducing unsafe driving maneuvers," said Michael Moran, field quality control officer and fleet manager at Lane Valente. "We've also expanded business intelligence by enabling data-driven decisions, strengthened compliance, and increased customer satisfaction. In addition, using telematics has increased workflow productivity, reduced fuel costs, and improved asset utilization."

Lane Valente also uses telematics to monitor drivers' locations so the company knows immediately who to send for emergency calls, as well as ensure techs service customers fully. Using a field service solution, Lane Valente can evaluate the effectiveness of work by analyzing fuel usage, number of hours on the job, scheduling and dispatch time, as well as other metrics.

Telematics have also helped the company track stolen vehicles. Lane Valente had four trucks taken, but with GPS connected, the vehicle can be located within minutes or hours of when it was reported missing.

Lane Valente also uses telematics to monitor unauthorized use. Each morning, Moran receives an exception report via e-mail showing all vehicles that were used during off hours. He then checks this report against the dispatch report to confirm that the use was warranted.

"At first, drivers thought the GPS system was a way for us to check up on them, but after time they saw it has helped them," Moran said. "No more questions about what time they got to the job and how could it take so long to get to the site." He added that this information is monitored daily to ensure an accurate payroll and client services.

Originally posted on Automotive Fleet