Challenge:
Dalton Electrical, Master Electricians with a fleet of 120 light vehicles and nearly 170 employees, operates across four branches in Auckland and surrounding North Island regions. The firm faced significant challenges in managing its large mobile team, ensuring responsive customer service and maintaining fleet efficiency. The primary issues included:
- Managing a fleet spread across various locations, dealing with urgent repairs and keeping up with routine and unexpected maintenance alike.
- The manual process of managing Road User Charges (RUC) licences was time-consuming and prone to errors.
- Maintaining real-time fleet visibility and keeping up with customer needs.
Overall, Teletrac Navman’s fleet management system is a huge benefit to understand what’s happening on a real-time basis and in one system. This has replaced hours getting feedback, most of which will be out of date by the time you hear it.
- Daniel Berry, Managing Director
Solution:
In 2019, Dalton Electrical adopted Teletrac Navman’s fleet management system to tackle critical operational challenges. The system includes electronic Road User Charges (RUC) management for real-time accuracy, while the mobile app allows the team to oversee the fleet from anywhere. This comprehensive system offered real-time insights into fleet activities, optimised maintenance schedules and simplified the management of RUC. Key benefits included:
- Real-time fleet visibility: With the ability to track vehicle and equipment locations instantly, Dalton Electrical can dispatch the nearest team members to urgent jobs, ensuring responsive and efficient customer service.
- Electronic RUC management: Automating the RUC licensing process streamlines what was once a manual and time-consuming task, reducing paperwork and the risk of compliance issues.
- Mobile accessibility: Busy managers can now monitor and manage the fleet directly from their smartphones and laptops. Whether in the office or on the go, they can make timely and informed decisions.
- Safety and compliance: The system sets up speeds limits for individual customer sites, while ensuring Dalton Electrical’s drivers operate only in designated traffic areas. This reinforces safety standards and strengthens the company’s reputation as a responsible contractor.
Results:
The adoption of Teletrac Navman has delivered tangible improvements for Dalton Electrical:
- Faster customer response: The real-time fleet tracking enables quicker dispatching of electricians to critical service calls, minimising downtime for customers and keeping their operations running smoothly.
- Streamlined RUC management: By automating the RUC process, Dalton Electrical has drastically reduced the administrative workload, freeing up staff to focus on higher-value tasks like customer service. This new efficiency has saved time and ensured compliance with licensing requirements.
- Optimised fleet maintenance: The system’s proactive maintenance alerts have minimised unexpected breakdowns, extending vehicle lifespan and reducing overall maintenance costs.
- Resilience during emergencies: During the COVID-19 lockdowns, the cloud-based system proved critical, allowing Dalton Electrical to manage operations remotely and maintain service continuity as an essential business.
About Dalton Electrical:
Dalton Electrical is an Auckland based electrical contracting, engineering and industrial automation company. Founded by Dave Dalton over 50 years ago the business provides a full range of electrical design, installation, repair and maintenance services for industrial and commercial customers. Its core business is servicing industrial and manufacturing customers across the Auckland region, and into Waikato, the Bay of Plenty and Northland.