One of the UK’s largest social housing groups selects Cybit to manage mobile workforce

Sunderland Housing Group, the UK’s third largest social housing landlord, has selected a fleet management and telematics solution from Cybit to help manage its mobile workforce. Cybit has won a £300,000 order to install its Fleetstar-Online units to Sunderland Housing’s 210 light commercial vehicles, used by employees who maintain the Group’s 34,000 properties. The new solution will enable fleet managers to track the vehicles’ location in real-time and use historical reporting tools to resolve customer enquiries, improve driver efficiency and provide duty of care to its mobile workforce.

The order follows a raft of recent orders for Fleetstar-Online including Aberdeenshire Council, Wyre Forest Community Housing Association and Superior Plumbing Installations (SPI) Limited. The Cybit solution will enable Sunderland Housing Group to fulfil its duty of care responsibility to its mobile workforce – which includes electricians, plumbers, gas fitters, joiners, glaziers and fencers. By using Fleetstar-Online, Sunderland Housing will have ‘anytime, anywhere’ visibility of its fleet to provide location fixes on employees, giving tenants accurate ETAs, confirming proof of call to a property and giving drivers SMS or voice directions should they become lost.

"We have over 200 employees working across a range of trades maintaining 34,000 properties, so our workforce management needs are quite complex – we want to know who is working on what property, and we sometimes have to prove it to our tenants," said Alan Ballantine, Group Procurement Manager at Sunderland Housing Group. "Fleetstar-Online provides the accurate means of tracking vehicles and analysing performance that we require as part of a commitment to maintaining the highest standards in housing maintenance. If we have a customer query, we will be able to see which staff visited which properties, and when. And critically the solution will give us visibility of our mobile workforce in real-time which helps us fulfil our duty of care responsibilities to our employees."

"Sunderland Housing Group is one of the largest providers of social housing in the UK. With a large number of properties to manage and maintain, knowing where mobile workers are at any point in time has obvious benefits in terms of visibility and helping to ensure employees’ safety at all times," added John Wisdom, Director of Sales and Marketing at Cybit. "In addition to the safety benefits, Fleetstar-Online’s powerful reporting capabilities will also enable Sunderland Housing Group’s fleet managers to measure journey times, average speeds, vehicle mileage and unscheduled stops to maintain high levels of individual and fleet driving performance."

Fleetstar-Online provides companies employing a mobile workforce with cost-effective ASP-based fleet management capabilities and a rapid return on investment. Fleet vehicles are fitted with a small electronic in-vehicle-unit (IVU) which is tracked by GPS in real-time and data transmitted to Cybit’s online control centre to be accessed by users over the Internet with a standard web browser. Fleetstar-Online’s ‘anytime, anywhere’ fleet management tools include real-time location-based tracking of vehicles, up-to-the-minute traffic information, route planning and scheduling, historical reporting and analysis, journey replay, exception reporting and SMS capabilities.

Sunderland Housing Group was created in 2001 and is the largest Registered Social Landlord in the North-East and the third largest in the United Kingdom, owning and managing over 34,000 properties in Sunderland. The Group has an ambitious £500 million modernisation plan and £200 million plan to build 4,000 new homes to change Sunderland's skyline, a unique company structure and employs 1,500 people.

For more information, please visit www.sunderlandhousinggroup.co.uk

Cybit is the UK’s fastest growing provider of telematics and fleet management solutions and, through its distinctive open-platform approach, delivers a full range of Internet-based software and support services to mobile workforces. Key users of Cybit’s offering include service engineers, commercial vehicle operators, rental fleet operators and users, mobile office workers and local authorities. The Cybit product suite is the first in the market to combine a range high-technology telematics devices and Internet-based fleet management software with personalised service 24/7. This enables Cybit operators to obtain data and deliver services or assistance via wireless networks for safety critical events, accident or breakdown, as well as providing support if a vehicle is stolen, or a driver is late or lost. Cybit is also the first company to combine these high technology solutions with a car pooling service to address vehicle congestion and optimise resources.

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