apetito is the UK’s creator and supplier of meals partnering with the health and social care sector. It makes a real difference, allowing people to eat healthily whether they are at home, in hospital or in care.The company delivers more than thousands of meals every year from the company’s Bristol based distribution centre, and has twice won the UK’s highest business accolade The Queen’s Award for Enterprise.
Meals are both delicious and nutritious, enhancing health and wellbeing, and apetito has a range of meals which cater for all, including those who have special dietary requirements (including gluten free), have a suppressed appetite, have a food allergy or need a texture modified diet.
Given the company’s global footprint and breadth of its delivery network, apetito already had route optimisation and tracking solutions in place to provide visibility on how its fleets performed.
However, the company struggled to analyse the data because it came from different suppliers and products. This meant gleaning insights from vehicles and having a holistic view of the fleet’s performance was complex. apetito invested in the Telogis software platform to bring this intelligence together into one integrated system.
Choosing the right solution provider
After scouring the market to assess its options, it quickly became clear that most suppliers could not offer an integrated software solution, apart from Telogis.
Daniel Paull, Distribution manager, Customer Services & Distribution at apetito, comments; “Given the competition within our industry, we’re always looking to improve the volume, quality and timeliness of deliveries to our customer base. When we looked at our routing and tracking capabilities, we quickly realised that the best way for us to do this without expanding our fleet of 50 vehicles was to implement a centralised, integrated platform which presented all the intelligence to us in one place.
We wanted software that allowed us to improve the scheduling of our deliveries by analysing all the data created by our drivers, and it was clear from the outset that Telogis’ fully integrated cloud-based platform was the only solution that could cater for our needs.”
Driving efficiencies across the business
After the initial phase, apetito deployed Telogis across its entire UK fleet – 50 units covering every regions of the country. The solution will be in place for apetito’s vehicle refresh cycle, and means all the company’s key performance deliverables across its fleet, including routing, tracking, driver performance and vehicle condition monitoring, now feed into one central software platform.
This provides apetito with a comprehensive view of how the fleet is performing in real time, and creates operational efficiencies by significantly improving the regularity, quality and schedule of its deliveries to its customers.
apetito has also benefitted from the fact the Telogis platform is a web-based, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) fleet management system. This has saved a significant amount on IT spend as all performance data can be run through the cloud, avoiding expensive outlay on applications and hardware to underpin the management of its fleet.
It also means that any analysis conducted using the Telogis platform can be easily extrapolated and applied to any aspect of apetito’s fleet operation whenever necessary.
Making compliance easy
One of the benefits of choosing Telogis was ensuring compliance procedures could also be completed and handled using one specific platform. One of the key constituents of its compliance structure was its vehicle defect management system, which drivers use to report back on issues with their vehicle and book it in for maintenance when required.
Prior to Telogis, compliance was not integrated with the company’s route optimisation and tracking capabilities.
This produced separate data sets, and apetito was unable to create a singular view of the performance of its fleet, incorporating the performance of the vehicle on the road, its delivery schedule and condition. This proved problematic when scheduling vehicle maintenance, as apetito’s routing and planning systems were unable to factor in the condition of each vehicle when coordinating deliveries to the company’s large customer base.
By opting for Telogis, apetito now has visibility of all these key deliverables all in one place, allowing it to assess the condition and performance of its fleet at all times. Driver Vehicle Inspection Reports (DVIRs) are now integrated into the overall platform, which is integral to ensuring apetito’s fleet operates at full capacity, and its delivery schedules are not altered by unforeseen vehicular maintenance requirements.
As Daniel Paull explained; “By working with Telogis we’ve revolutionised the way we manage our fleet of vehicles, and we’re now able to consistently assess the performance of our fleet through one universal system. This is incredibly important as it reduces the complexity of managing and operating our fleet in the field, and ensures we remain compliant while trying to increase the efficiency of our fleet against our core objectives.”
Moving forward
By adopting the Telogis platform, apetito has learnt that clear, digestible and consistent information can be easily analysed to significantly improve the quality and consistency of its deliveries.
The company plans to continue expanding the connectivity of its fleet in the future, using the Telogis platform to integrate even more of its data footprint into one centralised system. This includes electronic proof of delivery, with the company keen to automate the collection and recording of electronic customer signatures.
Doing so will introduce yet another aspect of compliance to its platform, with the resulting time and location data created enabling even more intelligence to inform routing and planning across apetito’s fleet operations.
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