Asset Management

Fundamentally, it's about customers - making sure our vehicles are the ones our customers want. Effective and efficient for them, and for us, economical and viable.

Our Asset Management teams are responsible for looking after all aspects of our fleets - from assessing and buying new vehicles to looking at the most commercially viable way of disposing of the old ones. It's a complex, ever changing aspect of our business. In addition we need to look at where they're needed, at what frequency and all the efficiencies associated with movement and use. We have to make sure that we buy the right product and effectively sweat each and every asset.

It's a matrix of decision making. At Northgate we have established a dedicated team to understand data and plan vehicle purchases and vehicle movements around the UK and Ireland on a rolling basis. We understand which vehicles we should sell and defleet and which vehicles to replace them with. The team are also constantly evaluating the fleet penetration and usage for Northgate. So it's not just a case of moving vehicles to mobilise a new contract or meet demand, it's understanding whether more additional stood replacement vehicles need to be moved to meet the needs of our customers.

And we're improving by introducing technology too. We can see the immediate impact of using PDAs in the workplace to report on vehicles straight to a centralised service centre, support with the scheduling and compliance and with asset management in terms of vehicle administration. The technology helps us improve efficiency whilst allowing us to collect useful data to measure and improve performance - for both customer satisfaction and financially.