Scobie McIntosh

The Challenges

Scobie McIntosh employs engineers based from home who go directly to customer sites to carry out work. Managing these engineers was becoming increasingly difficult, even with the assistance of an ageing vehicle tracking solution, and there were also growing concerns that this issue could impact on quality of service offered to a rapidly growing number of customers.

Therefore, it was decided that an immediate re-evaluation of the existing solution should be conducted and other options explored so to avoid jeopardising customer relationships in the future.

The Solution

Following careful consideration and research, Scobie McIntosh decided to implement Crystal Ball’s Fleet Vehicle Tracker solution with the Driver Behaviour bolt-on.

This was initially based on the improvements in functionality Crystal Ball could offer over the previous solution, including detailed mapping with live vehicle positioning and directional markers for greater detail.

In addition, FleetTracker offers live traffic incident updates, detailed journey reports, timesheets, and speeding notifications, all of which are proving to be useful features beyond the original scope of requirements.

The additional Driver Behaviour bolt on also allows Scobie McIntosh to run utilisation reports to assess driving standards of their engineers, reporting against harsh braking, harsh acceleration, and harsh cornering instances on vehicles.

The Outcome

Since the implementation of Crystal Ball’s FleetTracker, Scobie McIntosh now has live visibility of their workforce from the moment they leave home, knowing exactly where they are and the duration they are at a customer.

This also means that FleetTracker has helped to allay the concerns had over the quality of service offered to customers by Customer Services. Newly available information, such as real-time journey updates and ETA’s for engineers is now available if a customer calls, which is a significant benefit for the department. Real-time traffic updates also benefit the department as it allows both the customer and Scobie to understand why the engineers may be held up and running late. It also can be used to help divert engineers to a less congested route if necessary, reducing delays.

Dave Perry, General Manager at Scobie McIntosh comments:

“Real-time traffic reports have been a huge benefit for us, and we are now able to plan our routes better and schedule work more effectively using CrystalBall’s FleetTracker. These factors have increased efficiency, lowered fuel costs, and helped us to identify many cost-cutting opportunities.”

Additional Comments

Scobie McIntosh has also discovered additional benefits from the solution since implementation:

“We now have timesheets automated via Crystal Ball which has improved accuracy and drastically cut the admin time spent processing them, whilst the Driver Behaviour bolt-on has helped us to minimalise dangerous driving instances. The system has also highlighted issues with engineers speeding on regular occasions, which may not have been noticed before the implementation of Crystal Ball. These issues have been subsequently resolved since the solution has been put in place.”