Case Study

Europcar Ireland is Ireland’s leading vehicle hire company. Over 6,000 Europcar vehicles, across more than 25 locations, move around the country during the year. As the business has expanded, so has its fleet. This has encouraged the company to explore new ways to improve driver safety and to more precisely track vehicle inventory. Enabling customers to use the full Europcar fleet at any time and from any branch, is key to the company.

To address this, Europcar invested in a telematics system in 2015 for its entire fleet. The system helps improve driver behaviour by reporting on how a car is driven, monitoring driving conditions and reporting back to retail and business fleet customers. The system also offers a GPS programme to report on car location, which allows Europcar to give better assistance to customers if there are any issues with the vehicle. Europcar ultimately settled on the RentalMatix solution with connectivity provided by Three’s machine-to-machine (M2M) platform.

Solution

Commenting on their innovative approach to managing vehicle inventory, Alex McConkey, IT Manager for Europcar Ireland said, “each vehicle is now fitted with a telemetry device that includes a Three SIM card through which we access a variety of data. We run a weekly Smooth Driver Competition in association with our insurer, AIG, which rewards the best driver behaviour scores each week with a range of prizes. The growing trend of ‘gamification’ is definitely something to be embraced by businesses today and we are keen to develop this further to improve customer engagement with our brand.”

Results

By improving driver behaviour and safety, Europcar’s telematics system has reduced insurance claim costs and has helped substantially with fraud prevention. The system provides the company with detailed impact information in case of an accident. It also allows accidents to be restaged and the movement of the vehicles involved to be reviewed in suspicious circumstances.

Europcar also uses the data provided to streamline its operational processes. Previously, a stock take of the fleet available to rent at each location was a manual and labour intensive process. Positioning data from the new system allows for the location of every vehicle to be pinpointed and cross-referenced with the rental system. At any point in time, the system lets Europcar ensure that vehicles are available for hire and optimally located to meet customer needs.

McConkey says Three’s service has been very effective. “Three has provided us with the ability to be very agile in how we manage devices. Given the constant fluctuation in demand, we are installing and removing devices on an ongoing basis depending on the time of year. Three’s provision of device deactivation has been seamlessly managed through automated batch processing.”

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