AT THE HEART OF THE ROAD TRANSPORT INDUSTRY.

Call our Sales Team on 0208 912 2120

DRS: Swapping trad for high-tech

25th April 2002, Page 18
25th April 2002
Page 18
Page 18, 25th April 2002 — DRS: Swapping trad for high-tech
Close
Noticed an error?
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.

Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

• A household name can be a doubleedged sword. Everybody knows what you are, but they may not know what you can do. With a facelift featuring a new livery, a major fleet upgrade and new customer services on the way BRS is keen to break out of what managing director James Walker sees as a "traditional" pigeon-hole.

"We don't want to be seen as old and staid," he stresses. "We want to be seen as investing and going forward in the market." That market, he adds, is "quite an exciting, hostile one!"

The forthcoming re-branding (see tint box) and new services are key to BRS's development. "We want to take it beyond a rental brand," Walker explains. "That's why we're having the logo change— we've given BRS a lot more publicity, raising its visibility, making it a bit younger and with an innovative feel."

Among those innovations is the ability to show rental customers the service and maintenance records for any BRS vehicle via the Internet. Creating that database was anything but easy (or cheap) as it involved copying the data from all the service sheets submitted by the Volvo dealers which maintain the nationwide BRS fleet.

This service will be launched by BRS at next week's CV Show, with visitors encouraged to see it in action. Walker freely admits that a solution to an internal BRS problem—namely how to consolidate all its paper records on the fleet into a more manageable and easy-to-access computerised system—has generated a powerful sales tool for potential customers.

"We're offering it to customers for the same reason that I want it," he says. "I've got an 0-licence: I run 3,000 vehicles; we're the second biggest truck operator in the UK. Our need came first! We sat down and said: 'How are we going to do this?' Then we thought: 'Why not offer It to customers too?'" Getting the data onto the website was no mean feat. "We had to enter over 70,000 service sheets into the database," Walker explains. "In total we had to spend close to £120,000 on the server to handle all the data and £40,000 just on scanning in the sheets."

The system clearly has its attractions: in the event of any queries at a VI roadside check or fleet inspection, an operator who is renting a BRS vehicle can have instant 24-hour access to VED and service records for it.

BRS is also planning to offer fleet management information on rental v. des. Before long all new vehicles will be fitted with a data logger: not surprisingly, it's Volvo's Dynafleet. To access the Dynafleet data, rental customers will simply log onto the Volvo website, avoiding the need to invest in their own equipment. Dynafleet also provides BRS with a potential marketing edge over its rivals by offering customers their own unique operating data—and it also alloWs it to monitor its own vehicles for any abuse.

As Walker points out: "Because we're an operator in our own right we know what customers have to deal with!"

Tags

People: James Walker

comments powered by Disqus