Author Archives: Thomas Pollard

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A survey of over 100 senior UK haulage fleet managers, conducted by the Association for Driving Licence Verification (www.ADLV.co.uk), has shown that 91% of respondents want CPC & Tacho data to be available alongside online driving licence checks. They also believe that its inclusion would eliminate the industry’s current but imprecise reliance on visual data checking. A further 90% felt that the availability of CPC and Tacho information would make their own monitoring of driver entitlement easier, by supporting existing HR systems and acting as a single point of reference.

The ADLV believes that the data, which is currently held by the DVSA and DVLA, could be easily made available alongside existing online driving licence data feeds. Should the data become available, the Association believes it would reduce employer risk, ensure a better-trained workforce and also improve road safety.

The survey also questioned whether not knowing the training status of drivers presented the respondents with a significant administrative challenge? In all, 75% of those surveyed felt that this was indeed a challenging issue and that automating training status data would help reduce the burden considerably. In all 80% of respondents agreed with the ADLV that access to the information would also benefit road safety, help them to remind drivers about compliance issues and to raise awareness of employee fraud risks.

Commenting on the survey, Kevin Curtis the ADLV’s Technical Director added, “This survey was conducted by our member companies over the last few months and reflects the views of 100 senior UK Haulage managers - many of whom come from fleets of over 100 vehicles. Quite simply, it highlights a significant demand for change. This data needs to be available, whether it's used to improve compliance, training, licence administration or more broadly to increase road safety. We have forwarded the respondents’ views to the DVLA and are optimistic that they will look sympathetically upon our call to action.”

 

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New family service helps parents get kids to schools and activities

London parents struggling with ferrying their kids to school and other activities now have a new option - a family ride-and-care service, which provides safe transportation for children with drivers who are experts in childcare, dubbed ‘Guardians’.

OneLane service

OneLane soft-launched in London in March 2016, serving zones 1-3. Used by a few dozen families during this beta-testing period, high customer retention and repeat rates[1] confirm that OneLane addresses major pain points for parents – helping to replace stressful scenarios with quality family time.

OneLane now plans for further expansion throughout the capital, with carpooling and wraparound childcare features launching soon.

Reducing stress & time pressure
OneLane means no more nerve-wracking school runs, battling through congested streets, fighting over inadequate parking spaces; And, for working parents, it allows freedom from the guilt of not being able to be in two places at one time. Children can lead active social lives, while parents gain extra time to fulfil work commitments.

Anne, mum to Michelle, aged 11, says, “OneLane has been a life-saver for me. I no longer have to leave work earlier to pick Michelle up, or have to pay for expensive nannies with a minimum number of hours. With OneLane, I am paying only for the drive time. Also, how cool that I get real-time updates on the ride and can rest assured that Michelle has been picked up and is on her way to ballet class."

Finding a family’s perfect match
Parents can enjoy peace of mind about their children’s safety when they use OneLane’s family service. Each ‘Guardian’ is experienced in childcare and thoroughly vetted, with enhanced DBS checks as standard.

Because OneLane wants to build trusted, long term relationships between families and ‘Guardians’, it offers a match-making service, whereby the ‘Guardian’ is pre-introduced and the same person is used for all regular journeys. This familiar face becomes a valuable member of the family’s support network.

Through the OneLane app, parents can select to ride-along with their children for any of their scheduled journeys. However, if they are not present, they can take advantage of continuous ride progress updates and notifications when their child has reached their destination. For added safety, OneLane ‘Guardians’ chaperone children inside the venue they are attending and sign them in to activities.

Meet the Guardians
OneLane ‘Guardians’ are parents, nannies, childminders and teachers, selected because of their proficiency in caring for children. In addition to being great with kids, they are impeccable drivers too. Their driving behaviour on every journey is monitored by the OneLane team to ensure that high standards are maintained.

Coming soon – wraparound childcare
Parents who need additional childcare before or after scheduled journeys will soon be able to book it through the OneLane app. From July 2016, wraparound childcare will be available. For those who have already developed a strong bond with a OneLane ‘Guardian’, this will be a valuable extension of the service, freeing up more time for parents for work or other commitments.

Carpooling – the cure for school-run congestion
From September 2016, OneLane customers will be able to opt to carpool with other families via the OneLane app. This benefits the customer financially, reducing the cost from the current £9 flat fare for journeys under 20mins to an average of £7 or less per journey per child. It also helps to tackle the increasing problem of school run traffic congestion, which has repercussions on road safety and air pollution.

The OneLane team
OneLane was founded by CEO Camron Moradi, an experienced Internet and automotive … Read more

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Leading automobile manufacturer optimises campaigns and maximises ROI using marketing analytics from MarketShare

London, 18 April, 2016 – MarketShare, a Neustar Solution and global leader in advanced marketing analytics software, today announced it has been selected by Audi UK to better understand its customers’ journeys and optimise its marketing spend. Using the industry’s only holistic planning and attribution solution, MarketShare DecisionCloud, Audi will be able to fully understand the true value of each marketing activity as well as customer interaction, and predict the effectiveness of future marketing investments.

Like many marketers eager to make more data-driven decisions, Audi wanted to focus on improving returns of its marketing and promotional activities through next-generation planning and attribution analytics. Following a competitive procurement process, Audi chose MarketShare for its best of breed technology, service and ability to scale.

“We chose MarketShare for its excellent reputation in the industry and we have seen a positive culture change in the company since we established our partnership. Now more than ever, it is important to see marketing as a profit generator – not a cost – on the income statement and MarketShare has helped us to highlight this,” said Nick Ratcliffe, Head of Marketing, Audi UK. “We rely heavily on agency partnerships and MarketShare has been very cooperative with all of our partners, who have improved their campaigns thanks to this integration.”

Audi has decided to use MarketShare’s unique omnichannel approach, utilising its holistic attribution expertise to first thoroughly analyse the customer journey. Audi has also deployed MarketShare DecisionCloud to access these updated models in real-time where effectiveness will be measured through predictive analysis and evaluation on improvements to ROI.

Commenting on the announcement, Lucien van der Hoeven, general manager EMEA at Neustar said: “Marketers need to find ways to make their brands heard above the noise in both the online and offline landscapes in order to drive revenue growth. By tapping our predictive models that cover both planning and campaign-level attribution, Audi UK will be creating a sustainable competitive advantage to better understand the journey its customers take, make more effective marketing decisions and ultimately connect marketing to revenue.”

Audi and MarketShare will be co-presenting at the I-COM Global Summit, 18-21 April in Seville, Spain, where they will be discussing the change in culture within organisations to see marketing as a tool to drive profit generation through the use of data.

the first real-time provider of cloud-based information services, enabling marketing and IT security professionals to promote and protect their businesses. With a commitment to privacy and neutrality, Neustar operates complex data registries and uses its expertise to deliver actionable, data-driven insights that help clients make high-value business decisions in real time, one customer interaction at a time. More information is available at www.neustar.biz.… Read more

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Battens Solicitors, recognised as one of the UK’s most progressive law firms, has chosen Electronic Document Bundling software from legal systems innovator Zylpha (www.zylpha.com). The practice, which has offices in Yeovil, Sherborne, Dorchester, Weymouth and London will use Zylpha to prepare, paginate and distribute Court bundles and other legal documents. It will also use the software to organise documents for commercial and residential property sales and auctions, which are published online. The system also incorporates an integration for the practice’s current Lawsoft CMS and the potential to integrate with other Case Management Systems that it upgrades to in the future.Zylpha's widely acclaimed legal document bundling technology, slashes the time taken to prepare and maintain document bundles and significantly boosts overall organisational efficiency. With Zylpha, users can create PDF based bundles to meet a broad range of practice requirements and then send them securely both around the enterprise and beyond. The bundles can contain documents from all leading applications and can include both audio and CCTV files. Using electronic bundles also reduces unsustainable paper and storage consumption in the workplace. Inadequate postal and courier systems are also consigned to the past.

Battens chose Zylpha because of its track record of delivering effective bundling to legal practices, its unrivalled secure delivery systems and the bundling system’s proven integration with existing case management systems used at the firm. Commenting on the choice of Zylpha David Polson, IT Support & Systems Developer of Battens noted, “Battens Solicitors pride ourselves on delivering an exceptionally high quality service and we expect the same from our suppliers. Zylpha’s Electronic Document Bundling solution has met and exceeded our expectations. Because more and more of the documents we work with on a daily basis are being sent and received electronically, our staff need to have the right tools to work with them. The implementation of Zylpha’s software has boosted our internal efficiency dramatically and has enabled us to more rapidly respond to the needs of our clients and adapt to the changing demands of the UK court system.”

For his part Tim Long CEO of Zylpha welcomed David’s comments adding, “For over 300 years Battens Solicitors has been at the centre of Dorset and Somerset life. With offices in Yeovil, Sherborne, Dorchester, Weymouth and London, it is one of the largest firms in the area with over 20,000 clients. It’s an impressive set up and it’s clear that the practice has built its first rate reputation upon delivering excellence in all it does and maintaining the highest possible standards of client service is a constant goal. Naturally, an on-going commitment to innovation is an important element in maintaining such service levels and we are delighted that Battens has chosen Zylpha to manage their document bundling and secure document communication. We look forward to working closely with them over time.”

 

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Zylpha (www.zylpha.com), the UK’s leading legal systems innovator has launched a new version of its widely acclaimed MoJ (Ministry of Justice) Portal integration. The software, which incorporates a host of new features and functionality, automates the smooth transfer of case management information for RTA (Road Traffic Accident) and EL/PL (Employers’ and Public liability) Portal submissions. This significantly speeds up the document submission process, whilst reducing costs and eliminating the manual input errors associated with the double handling of data.

The latest version now has intuitive new workflow screens with additional context sensitive user guidance to aid navigation and enhance user experience. There are also options to chain consecutive portal functions where appropriate, thereby saving time and ensuring improved accuracy. Scheduled status updates are also now included at each stage with clear visibility of timeout dates to reduce risk.

MOJ Portal Integration

The new RTA/ELPL release is fully integrated within leading Case Management Systems, SolCase and Visualfiles from LexisNexis. It significantly reduces the time taken to complete submissions from 25 minutes down to five minutes on average. Zylpha expects that the new workflow screens and user enhancements will reduce the time taken even further.

Commenting on the new version Tim Long CEO of Zylpha added, “We were really impressed by the time and cost savings that our original solution delivered for our clients. By taking this version to new levels of refinement, with added features and functionality, we are convinced it will soon establish itself as a must have best-practice solution. Quite simply, our team has just made an extremely successful system even better.”

 

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Graysons Solicitors (www.graysons.co.uk) has saved 300 hours whilst submitting claims to the MOJ (Ministry of Justice) portal by using integration software from Zylpha (www.zylpha.com), the UK’s leading legal systems innovator. The software, which is integrated with the practice’s existing SolCase & Visualfiles case management systems, automates the transfer of case management information to the MOJ portal for both EL/PL (employer and public liability) and RTA (road traffic accident) casework. Zylpha has also supplied Adobe’s eSign software for documents that require electronic signatures across the practice which offers a broad range of legal services including: personal injury, medical negligence, property family law, wills & administration of estates, elderly client services and other private client work.

As Zylpha’s portal integration delivers rapid and full real-time MOJ portal access, the efficiency savings have been significant. Zylpha’s own analytics conclude that whilst each manual application to the MOJ portal would have taken a minimum of 25 minutes manually, the SolCase & VisualFiles integration takes just a matter of seconds. Paul White, Graysons’ IT manager, was keen to highlight the scale of the potential savings commenting; “Over the course of a year, we will have processed over 900 of MOJ portal claims and, based on Zylpha’s research, we will have saved over 300 hours of manual data processing and that doesn’t take into account efficiency gains in responses from insurers and having data contained within our VisualFiles case management system. Separately the Adobe eSign software that Zylpha has supplied has also delivered significant benefits by reducing the time and costs involved in obtaining signatures on legal documents. The savings and efficiency gains we achieve by using Zylpha’s systems make a significant contribution to our commitment to delivering a contemporary, innovative, efficient and cost effective service to our clients.

Paul White, Graysons IT Manager

Tim Long Zylpha’s CEO welcomed these comments adding, “As a highly respected and long standing law firm founded in 1925, Graysons has built a strong reputation for delivering the very highest levels of practice management and client support throughout all aspects of its operations. Innovation has a key role to play here in maintaining these standards and we are delighted that the practice has chosen our MOJ integration portal to support its RTA and EL/PL claims. We look forward to working closely with the team at Graysons Solicitors to see where else our systems might be able to support its work.”

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The ADLV (Association for Driving Licence Verification) www.adlv.co.uk is forecasting that best practice and road safety objectives will drive a greater fleet focus on the volume, frequency and type of electronic driver checks in 2016. Amongst the trends that the ADLV forecasts are:

Greater Frequency Of Checking:
In keeping with its recent marketing campaign, encouraging Fleet Managers to move to quarterly checks from annual ones, the ADLV is expecting that the average frequency of online checks will increase significantly. The figures are particularly important given the recent statistics highlighted by the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM). These show that 7,621 people are still driving with 12 points or more on their licence. A further 36,000 motorists are on the brink of losing their driving licence. Whilst these drivers have reached the threshold to receive a ban, they are still driving, endangering other road users.

ADLV logo

The ADLV believes that as most fleets move to biannual or quarterly checking, motivated by the general trend towards lower cost per check, the risk of fleet drivers carrying undeclared endorsements will be dramatically reduced. This policy has already received widespread acclaim from many of the UK’s largest fleets and the ADLV believes that this momentum will continue to gain pace across the course of the coming year. From a current base of 1.4 checks per driver per annum, the ADLV believes that the figure is likely to exceed to 1.7 checks per driver per annum in 2016.

Increased Volume of Checks:
Partly as a result of the increased frequency and partly as a result of the abolition of the paper license counterpart last July, there will be an overall increase in the annual volume of electronic checks in the coming year. The number of checks through the ADLV membership has been rising steadily over the course of this year it is expected that the total number will now increase to over 2.5 million in 2016, a growth rate of around 25% per annum.

Wider Range of Data Available:
The breadth and type of data available to Fleet Managers will also increase as the concept of ‘Know Your Driver’ spreads as a Best Practice. This will help tackle growing issues such as Right To Work in the commercial sector where the use of illegal workers is becoming a burning issue.

Commenting on the forecasts, Richard Payne-Gill Deputy Chair of the ADLV noted; “2016 will be a tipping point for commercial electronic licence checking as Fleet Managers, HR Executives and Risk Assessors now understand the real potential of frequent electronic checking and the increasing breadth of datasets that are becoming available. This allows Fleets to set new standards of best practice on one hand whilst making a real contribution to road safety on the other.

“Probably the most significant change will be the evolution of the data itself, including an increase in the number of datasets available. This is being driven by the demands from Fleet Managers themselves who see this new approach as benefitting both fleet management best practice and road-safety. It will also add to the confidence companies have that the right people are behind the wheels of their vehicles. Indeed the days of rogue drivers slipping through the net are now well and truly numbered.”

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Note To Editors: About the ADLV (www.adlv.co.uk)
The Association for Driving License Verification has been established to promote and encourage best practice within the industry for the initial and continued validation of driver entitlement for responsible employers and road safety.

The ADLV will both represent and regulate Members organisations in accordance … Read more