Industry areas
- Construction
- Manufacturing
Head office
- Jersey
Sites
- UK Wide – 300+
Number of assets
- 3200+
Asset types
- Artics
- Rigid HGV
- Mixers trailers
- Vans and cars
Introducing Breedon Group
Breedon Group is a leading construction materials group in Great Britain and Ireland.
They produce cement, aggregates, asphalt, ready-mixed concrete, Welsh slate, specialist concrete and clay products, and offer a range of contracting services. They were looking to consolidate and modernise their fleet and asset management systems, to enable them to drive efficiencies within their operations, cut costs and reduce risk.
Breedon Group’s challenge
Breedon Group realised that their fleet and workshop management systems and processes required updating. They were using a combination of paper-based forms for inspections and defect reporting, along with several systems for managing operations, including cost analysis and compliance.
Sarah McKenna, Logistics Administration Manager at Breedon Group said: “We previously used paper-based solutions for inspections and defect reporting. Our Transport Managers were often having to travel 200 miles on a round trip just to pick up a defect form.”
The management processes were inefficient and open to errors, which made managing compliance difficult, particularly as they have a varied range of assets within their fleet. Breedon Group needed a system that could cover both their company car and commercial vehicle fleets.
Sarah explained: “The fleet management system we used prior to AssetGo was very clunky and outdated, it couldn’t hold all of our data and restricted us from doing what was needed. Maintaining this ageing system was causing difficulties, it wasn’t easy to make changes to and access was limited as it wasn’t cloud based.”
The combination of paper-based forms and multiple fleet management systems, with limited capability, meant that Breedon Group were unable to get a single view of compliance. Cost analysis and management reporting was complicated, time consuming and was restricted to certain parts of their fleet.
Sarah explained: “At head office we had a high-level view of the risk levels and compliance of our cars and vans but not for trucks as they were all managed locally by the Transport Managers.”
In summary, Breedon Group had experienced the following challenges:
- Time-consuming inefficient manual processes
- Paper-based inspection methods that required travel for collection
- Reliant on insecure documentation that could be corrupted
- Difficult to monitor the compliance of their varied fleet of assets
- Unable to manage company cars and commercial vehicles on a single system
- Methods were open to human error increasing financial risk
Requirement
Breedon Group were looking for a solution that could match their specific requirements and that could easily scale with their business growth.
Sarah explained: “We needed one system that could cover all our fleet requirements. One of the main functions we were looking for was the electronic vehicle checks for our drivers and our previous system couldn’t offer that. Keeping our previous system, meant sourcing a third system to help manage our workshop and fleet maintenance and run electronic vehicle checks.”
AssetGo solution
Breedon Group chose AssetGo to help streamline their fleet operations, consolidating three systems into a single cloud-based solution, to enable them to carry out daily checks, report on defects and analyse costs for their fleet of 2,500+ assets, which includes artics, rigid HGV, mixers, trailers, vans and cars.
Sarah explained: “We chose AssetGo because it enabled us to consolidate three systems into one, so it’s a one-stop-shop.”
The system has helped Breedon Group to move away from paper-based processes, using digital inspections and defect reporting, which has improved efficiencies, lowered risk and reduced costs.
AssetGo’s planner and scheduler allow Breedon Group to effectively manage their fleet’s compliance.
Sarah explained: “Our Transport Managers love the scheduler and the planner. They get full visibility of what’s happening and are able to add all the PMI dates in six week layers plus the service schedules, tax and MOTs. Everything is in there and done on the electronic planner.”
Breedon Group’s varied fleet of vehicles means they need an easily customisable and adaptable system, which was a key reason why they chose AssetGo.
Since implementing the system, Breedon Group has benefitted from significant time and cost savings.
Sarah stated: “When you look at the time cost analysis, the reduction in road miles it’s saved for our Transport Managers and the cost it’s saved having one system rather than three, it hands down beats everything that we’ve had previously.”
Bespoke development
Breedon Group had several specific requirements that needed bespoke development for us to facilitate.
They wanted their vehicle inspections to be carried out using their existing TomTom Webfleet devices. This was not a standard feature of the system, so we created an Android version of the app that was compatible with this type of device.
Sarah stated: “Now all our inspections are done electronically using TomTom devices in cabs and there is no need for our Transport Managers to travel around just to pick up pieces of paper. They receive alerts and notifications so they can get on with managing the defects and making repairs straight away. It’s saved our managers so much time and the drivers love it because they’ve not got books and pieces of paper all over their cabs.”
We also developed a DVSA lookup feature to pull full vehicle specifications, based on registration plates, into the system. This includes information such as the number of axles, axle weights and axle specification. The new feature has saved Breedon Group the time and effort needed to source and then manually populate this information, making their operations more efficient.
Other significant developments include the integration of licence data for plating certificates enabling Breedon’s Transport Managers to access multiple depots on the system, as opposed to having full view of all site data, giving them clearer visibility of their area of responsibility.
All these features are now standard on AssetGo.
Complete visibility of compliance and costs
AssetGo has given Breedon Group complete visibility of all areas of their fleet management, along with the right data feeds, reporting tools and data analysis to enable them to effectively maintain compliance and make the right commercial decisions.
Sarah explained: “I find the cost reporting function particularly valuable. Any costs that come in, with regards to a vehicle, are logged in the system for cost analysis. Before we needed a separate system and didn’t have a clear view as payments went directly into the FinDoc’s payment system. I couldn’t report against a specific vehicle if it wasn’t allocated correctly but now suppliers have access to the system and our workshops are able to upload costs, which means I can get true cost analysis of the spend on vehicles. I can easily report that back to the Senior Management team. It provides great visibility across the fleet, for example if I see that a truck is being repaired and it is costing us significantly, I can then suggest alternatives or look to replace the vehicle if the costs are too high. The cost analysis functionality and
reporting tool benefits both myself and the Senior team, providing clear and accurate data that we can use to effectively manage our fleets.”
Sarah added: “We now know where all fleet vehicles are located and when Transport Managers are moving vehicles around between depots and sites or regions. Vehicle relocations are easily logged in the system along with driver information changes. Drivers can be linked to vehicles so we know who’s been driving it, when they drove it and any other associated data, which from a compliance point of view is perfect, for example if there is ever an incident or a penalty we can look back and see who was driving at that time and which depot it was based at.”
Sarah concluded: “AssetGo has given us a total view of compliance, including the movement of vehicles and duration levels. It’s certainly helped us reduce our risk levels.“
