The Company
Marshalls is the UK’s leading manufacturer and supplier of hard landscaping solutions to commercial and domestic markets. With manufacturing facilities and offices throughout the UK, the company also has facilities in Vietnam, China and India and a European operation based in Belgium.
It supplies natural stone products, including Yorkstone, sandstone, limestone, granite and slate, together with a wide range of other materials including steel, stainless steel, aluminium, cast iron, concrete, plastic and Ferrocast for use in hard landscaping, street furniture, counter terrorism solutions and water management systems. Marshalls products can be found in locations all over the world.
In the UK the company operates more than 200 vehicles, including the largest in-house 44 tonne crane fleet of 173 vehicles.
The Challenge
Over the last decade Marshalls has invested heavily in telematics, having had three different providers during that period. It found that each of them had certain core strengths, such as strong tracking or mapping, but were poor on the actual telematics. Marshalls operates the dynamic planning system, REACH, which is fed by telematics, and had experienced a lot of issues in the past with previous providers.
The company invested a lot of time undertaking an industry wide analysis of what was available and operating a rigorous tender process before arriving at a shortlist of three companies.
The Solution
Of the three companies on the shortlist, the team decided that Webfleet Solutions offered the best overall package and chose the WEBFLEET Software as a Service (SaaS) fleet management solution, together with PRO series Truck driver terminals and LINK boxes for advanced integration into the vehicle. Another plus point in making the decision was that the ruggedized tablets supplied by Webfleet Solutions are compatible with both ePOD (electronic proof of delivery) and EDIFACT (electronic data interchange) as well as eDefect reporting.
Installations were phased in across all the sites, with the tablets all being introduced together as the final part of the process and with all drivers receiving training in small groups of up to three people.
Although it is still early days, we believe we now have in place the correct system to facilitate our target of 10% savings across the business, much of which will be achieved via fuel savings, said Guy Ripley, Regional Logistics and Fleet Manager. We’ve had great feedback from the drivers, who have had experience of lots of other systems in the past and who are always quick to vocalise any concerns or criticisms. With Webfleet Solutions all feedback has been positive, particularly in relation to the accuracy of the truck satnav.
Marshalls are gold members of FORS (Fleet Operator Recognition Scheme). They are also award winners of the CILT (Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport) for excellence in safety. Guy Ripley sees Webfleet Solutions as a natural extension to safety related matters, offering useful intelligence for monitoring potentially unsafe behaviours in drivers, together with external factors such as bridge heights and weight restrictions.
Webfleet Solutions is vital for us in improving safety and operations and reporting on reduced emissions and fuel usage. The information we are now able to access has already prompted us to increase our driver training team and further enhance the skills and safety of our drivers, he concluded.
