Maintaining contact

Tasmanian-based Contact Electrical was founded in Launceston in 1986. Over time the company evolved into the Contact Group, expanding to Hobart and Burnie and further diversifying services to include design and project construction, as well as general electrical services.

Contact Electrical needed to improve its systems, particularly when it came to dispatching emergency jobs. The company’s process required many calls to members of the fleet to try and establish who was available and who was closest to the job, which consumed valuable time and impeded significantly on business productivity levels. The company decided to implement Fleetmatics REVEAL for GPS tracking, which immediately improved response times.

Since the implementation, Contact Electrical has visibility of each vehicle location on a live map, enabling it to assign new jobs to the nearest vehicle in real time and increasing productivity through time savings. The state purchasing manager for Contact, Adam Moore, said, “Being able to locate your fleet in real time is a big benefit. It saves calling four or five staff and checking their location just to find the nearest one.”

A lack of visibility into fleet location had also left Contact susceptible to unwarranted customer disputes. Without access to accurate job time, date data, vehicle location or driver activity, it was difficult for the back office to know whether a dispute had any merit. In the case of one customer complaint, the client phoned to say that a job had been left unfinished. A quick check of the Fleetmatics REVEAL app resolved the confusion instantly, meaning that time was not wasted unnecessarily. 

“We were able to check our Fleetmatics app, only to discover we never had any vehicles in that area. They soon figured out it was another electrical company that had been servicing their business and not us,” said Moore.

Under the previous system, Contact Electrical was unable to effectively manage company fleet fuel purchases, as there was no facility for verification of fuel card transactions against specific company vehicles. This left the company open to fuel card abuse, escalating costs unnecessarily.

Fleetmatics REVEAL features fuel card integration, meaning that purchases are easily verified to ensure they are assigned to the correct vehicles. It also allows the management team to track every fuel dollar and to produce fuel efficiency reports to ascertain which vehicles are meeting target efficiency ratings.

“We have had incidences in the past where employees have used fuel cards assigned to another individual, meaning that the vehicles being fuelled weren’t in line with the cards being used. Fleetmatics REVEAL enabled us to iron out those problems quickly and efficiently,” said Moore.

It’s not all about economic savings, however, as increased fleet and driver safety is another benefit of GPS vehicle tracking. Before Contact Electrical decided to implement such a system, it had no way of knowing how drivers were behaving. Employee safety is paramount to the company, so the real-time visibility of Fleetmatics REVEAL was a key motivator. Alerts and notifications are sent when unsafe driving habits are practised and management can immediately react in the event of a vehicle breakdown, or any other situation which puts the driver at risk. 

“We know where the guys are if something was ever to go wrong. We have had a broken down vehicle and Fleetmatics allowed us to quickly locate it and send assistance immediately,” said Moore.

Since Contact Electrical has transitioned to Fleetmatics REVEAL for GPS vehicle tracking, the company has enjoyed improvements across the board; faster response times, fewer customer disputes, better fuel and fleet management and increased safety.

“We get great support,” said Moore. “It’s an advanced system with more benefits and better value for money.”

Image credit: ©Lisa F.Young/Dollar Photo Club