Venson Automotive Solutions has won one of the largest contracts in its recent history with the signing of a major 1,400-vehicle leasing and fleet management with maintenance deal with Integral.

Bristol-based Integral has a national network of 15 centres and is Britain’s biggest and fastest growing national provider of comprehensive maintenance services for commercial and public sector buildings.

Venson, which presently has 11,500 cars and commercial vehicles on its book, won the sole supply contract, which runs until the end of 2012, in a competitive tender from a rival vehicle leasing and fleet management company.

Integral fleet manager Craig Watson said the company’s experience in working with blue-light fleets was among the critical factors in awarding the contract.

He said: “Just like the emergency services our operational vehicles react to call-outs from customers.

“Therefore, it is essential that vehicle downtime is reduced to the absolute minimum. The knowledge Venson has gathered from working with blue light fleets means it can use that same experience to ensure our cars and vans are on-the-road as much as possible and not in workshops.”

The new partnership will also boost Integral’s fleet management reporting processes as the company has eliminated spreadsheets in favour of Venson Interactive, the company’s online fleet management software.

While Watson is in overall charge of the Integral fleet, each of the company’s 15 centres employs a fleet administrator with responsibility for managing the cars and vans located at their site.

He said: “The functionality that we now have from utilising Venson Interactive has advanced our fleet management efficiency enormously.
“We have complete visibility of fleet vehicles and drivers 24/7 enabling us to drill down and extract vital information by exception quickly and easily.
“The administration time that is being saved is significant in both running the fleet and in compiling management data.
“We were also very impressed that prior to signing the contract Venson had already tailored the management system to meet a couple of our specific requirements.
“This now means that we can manage our fuel card data more efficiently and reallocate spare vehicles more effectively thus reducing costs as well as order vehicles online.”