Independent commercial vehicle dealer group Imperial Commercials has seen gains in operating efficiencies from the introduction of Ebbon-Dacs's MoDel-VM solution, which aims to improve vehicle collection and delivery efficiency.

The High Wycombe-based company, which employs 1,500 people in the UK, carried out an initial trial with two major fleet customers: a parcel delivery firm and a housing association which between them operate several thousand vehicles.

Following its successful conclusion, the company is now considering rolling it out for all its fleet customers.

Imperial operates from 39 dealer locations in the UK with seven van franchises – Volkswagen, Mercedes, Ford, Nissan, Isuzu, Fiat and LDV – and five truck franchises – DAF, Mercedes-Benz, MAN, Isuzu, and Renault.

The group’s corporate sales division, which has around 30-40 corporate customers including many of the UK’s major leasing companies, introduced Ebbon-Dacs’ MoDel-VM solution to its business earlier this year.

Rachael Helliwell, group corporate sales manager, said: “We have used MoDel for our Leaselink customers for some time because it is part of their service level agreements, but this is the first time we have trialled the stand-alone version for non-Leaselink users.

“It has been a major success and met all our requirements. With an electronic delivery note the opportunities for errors and inaccuracies are dramatically reduced as the delivery drivers have to follow an electronic delivery process and then obtain a signature from the customer.

“We can accurately record the condition of all the vehicles that we collect using the system’s camera to avoid any disputes and provide greater transparency for both sides. It really is a seamless process.

“It also helps speed up the pre-payment process as it allows us to complete the necessary information required much more quickly and efficiently. Our objective is to provide our customers with outstanding service and moDel-VM helps us do that.

“We delivered around 1,100 fleet vehicles last year and will probably deliver in the region of 2,000 vehicles this year. With that volume, we will now be considering using moDel-VM for all our non-Leaselink corporate customers going forward,” she added.

MoDel-VM complements the original moDel system which currently handles around 18,000 vehicle movements per month across the fleet market and is employed by 16 of the UK’s largest contract hire and leasing companies, who are also users of Ebbon-Dacs’ Leaselink e-procurement platform.

Now, the same level of functionality is available through MoDel-VM for companies which are responsible for large movements of vehicles, but which are not necessarily members of the Leaselink trading community, including logistics companies, daily rental suppliers and auction houses.

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