Phase three: in-life vehicle management
Keeping your vehicles on the road
Following completion of the implementation phase, your vehicles will be built and on the road. Our service doesn't stop here; for every vehicle, we are committed to walking with you through each step of its lifecycle. We will continually strive to provide you with the highest level of service in the following areas:
- Cost management
- Vehicle maintenance
- Compliance management
- Technical control
- Downtime management
- Choosing a garage
Cost management
To ensure that savings will continue to be generated for your fleet, we will carry out an annual audit on your contract with us, including analysis of the delivery methods we have in place. Following the audit, amendments will be made where necessary to confirm that savings initiatives are up to date. All findings will be communicated to you in the form of a report.
Vehicle maintenance
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Vehicle maintenance is a vital part of effective fleet management. During the life of each vehicle, we assess the maintenance and damage performance to vehicles. By benchmarking this data against other similar customers, we can provide a management tool to help influence behaviour change and reduce your costs. We achieve a fine balance of controlling costs whilst also investing in repair where appropriate, and reducing downtime at the same time as maintaining high standards of repair. |
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To achieve this balance, we have three separate teams who all work together to provide high quality in-life vehicle services; these are our compliance management, technical control and downtime management teams.
Compliance management
With specialist vehicles at the core of our business, we are highly experienced in researching and evaluating the compliance needs of the most complex vehicles. When a new bespoke vehicle arrives on the system that presents a fresh challenge to the compliance team, they will draw on the expertise of our internal field engineers who will use their technical knowledge and extensive industry contacts to find out the information required.
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Compliance can represent a time-consuming minefield for the average business, even with some knowledge and experience in the field. By outsourcing this area to us, your fleet’s compliance is controlled by our internal compliance management team who have specialist expertise, are dedicated to providing guidance and support, and have the experience and capabilities to manage the complexities of what can otherwise become an enormous administrative burden. |
Each vehicle on a customer’s fleet has a required schedule of events throughout the year (safety inspection, servicing, MOT etc), which must be completed in order for the vehicle to remain legally compliant. We will program these events into the Hitachi Capital compliance planner system and send a reminder to you prior to an event due date. A booking can be made on your behalf if required.
By managing the entire scheduling process, Hitachi Capital can ensure that if more than one type of event or inspection is due around the same time, where possible we can book them in for completion on the same day, and if possible, during a vehicle’s predicted downtime. This will minimise the costs involved with having your vehicle off the road.
Common compliance issues we will deal with include, but are not limited to, O licensing, Lifting operations and lifting equipment regulations and fuel tank legislation.
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Operator’s licence (O licence) Lifting operations and lifting equipment regulations (LOLER) |
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Fuel tanks
Different types of fuel tanks are also subject to their own regime of testing and compliance, depending on what type of fuel the tank carries and its construction and use. Fuel tanker legislation can be very complex but we have experience of managing these regulations through our long standing relationships with customers such as Watson Petroleum and WCF Fuels.
Technical control
Our technical control team are qualified engineers and mechanics who are responsible for evaluating and authorising repair jobs within the network. Many contract hire companies have non-technical people employed in this role and simply assign a maximum financial limit for an authorised repair. Although this is one route to limiting costs, it can effectively represent a false economy. A lasting repair might be more expensive than the prescribed limit, but necessary to prevent a recurring fault that will continue to return the vehicle back to the workshop. Only advisors such as ours, with the appropriate technical knowledge, will be qualified to make these judgements.
The technical control team also respond to the driver helpline; a dedicated phone number for drivers in need of advice or support regarding faults or vehicle breakdown. By speaking to an advisor with mechanical expertise, the driver will receive an accurate diagnosis of their issue and can be sent to the most appropriate garage within our UK supplier network to get the problem fixed first time. Managing the needs of the driver in this way helps provide reassurance to the driver whilst also relieving much of the pressure from you or your fleet manager, who would otherwise have to field these enquiries.
Downtime management
If a commercial vehicle needs a repair, it must be scheduled for (ideally) when the vehicle is not in use and then managed to a timely completion. We understand that a vehicle’s downtime must be kept to an absolute minimum. It’s often difficult (and an additional cost) to hire a replacement for a specialist commercial vehicle, so reducing the time spent off the road during downtime is crucial.
Our downtime management team will work directly with you to plan downtime according to your business’ needs. It is likely you will have a specific operational timetable and benefit significantly from repairs scheduled during non-working hours.
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Each downtime is an individual event and will be affected by a number of issues such as geographical area, vehicle specification, fault incurred and so on. However, after downtime data has been collected over a period of time, Hitachi Capital can begin to identify where downtime trends are occurring on particular vehicles, locations, and company sectors. This intelligence will be pulled together into your daily report and your account manager will use the information to demonstrate where downtime can be reduced even further. |
Choosing a garage
We have cultivated an extensive nationwide support network of garages and non-franchised dealers to give our customers and their commercial vehicles the highest achievable level of service and response, regardless of their geographical location. There are currently 650 garages within the Hitachi Capital primary network, with a total of 7,000 repairers nationwide who provide supplementary support.
We are very particular about which garages join our network and will always carry out stringent audits and reviews before agreeing to partner with a supplier.
Our UK supplier network is managed by a dedicated team of field engineers, with unrivalled technical knowledge and experience of vehicle repair. This technical qualification adds significant value to their relationships with our suppliers, helping to establish trust and confidence from both sides. Alongside this, our economies of scale mean that you as the customer will always get the best deal in every situation.
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Every job undertaken by a garage requires an order number, which must be updated throughout the process and then properly closed off when the job is completed. Although this means more work for us, the authorisation process ensures that each job is accurately priced, finished to completion and proven to save you money. We are happy to provide this vital support service to you, to allow for total peace of mind. Your vehicles will be serviced and maintained to the highest of standards and you can relax in the knowledge that duty of care for your drivers will always remain as a top priority for us. |
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Once this stage is complete, you will be ready to move on to phase four: vehicle remarketing.
If you are interested in discussing the needs of your commercial vehicle fleet with us then we would love to hear from you. Please call us on 01225 777 710.
