Iceland cuts licence checking admin time with DriverCheck

Iceland Foods has reduced administration time for licence checking using DriverCheck API.

The food retailer, which operates 1,000 stores across the UK, runs a fleet of around 250 company cars, 1,600 refrigerated diesel vans for delivered sales and home deliveries and a further 60 vans for maintenance engineers.

It performs licence checks on 6,800 drivers.

The API which connects seamlessly into the back-office systems at Iceland’s Deeside headquarters, cuts administration time drastically, freeing up staff to focus on other core activities, and allows the delivery of instantaneous electronic results, reducing the risk of errors and removing the possibility of double-keying.

Iceland’s fleet manager, James Roberts, said that introducing the API had made a “massive improvement” to the company’s licence checking process and was a “major uplift” in ensuring it is legally compliant.

“Before we installed the API, we had to resort to manual input which, with 6,800 drivers, you can imagine was very time consuming and labour intensive,” explained Roberts.

“On our delivered sales side, we may have several drivers for each vehicle. So, ensuring that our drivers are legally entitled to drive is vitally important for us to be able to provide the service to our customers.

“Now, using the API, once our HR department had added the driver’s details to our system, we notify DriverCheck electronically and their system automatically emails the driver with an e-declaration to complete. All details are uploaded overnight and any exceptions automatically flagged up.

“We have a number of DVLA codes which prevent the driver being accepted, such as convictions for drink driving, drug driving and causing death by dangerous driving. We accept drivers with six points on their licence, provided they do not include any of our prohibited codes,” he said.

The company cars, many of which are plug-in hybrids, are supplied under a solus badge BMW agreement, while the vans and refrigerated vans are a mix of Mercedes and Ford badged vehicles.  

DriverCheck managing director, Yvette Giannini, said the API was the “perfect solution” for busy HR, fleet and other line managers as it allowed different software systems to communicate directly with each other.

“Think of it as the bridge that enables your back-office system to connect directly with our driver licence checking service. This means you can initiate and receive results of driver licence checks without ever leaving your own platform and get immediate feedback on the status of driver licences.

“The results are delivered in real time and reduce human errors by automating the verification process. As a result, this frees up your HR or fleet team’s time for more strategic tasks. For a business like Iceland Foods with over 6,000 drivers, it is the ideal solution,” she added.

DriverCheck forms part of Ebbon Compliance, the UK’s largest driving licence checking and vehicle compliance business which carries out a total of over 1.6 million licence checks per annum.