The London Borough of Sutton is cutting the cost of maintaining its 136 strong vehicle fleet using fleet management software for controlling the cost of spare parts for the Council’s municipal vehicles. The Freeway software gives instant access to critical stock and financial information without wading through mountains of paperwork.

The Freeway software produces reports allowing full visibility of fleet running costs.

“Freeway gives us a clear picture of high value items; how many we have bought, vehicle usage and budget control. The slow moving stock reports are also useful in reducing overheads; the reports help us to decide which items we can eliminate from stock as we don't want money tied into unnecessary inventory,” says Colin Homes, fleet procurement manager at the London Borough of Sutton.

He also has the ability to completely interrogate the Freeway system allowing access to vehicle details, parts issued to vehicles as well as see the stock of parts.

“We set stock levels ensuring that we are notified when a stock item hits a low point and needs re-ordering. We can quickly identify whether a particular part is in heavy demand, enabling us to investigate its use and determine whether there is a quality problem with it or if there is a problem with the vehicle. For example, we found that we were changing many beacon bulbs and the reason we determined was a quality issue. We simply changed the stock item for a better quality bulb and the problem was solved,” he says.

The Council has been able to set up an additional store for its Streetscene section using the Freeway system. This store holds a huge range of items from tools to protective clothing used by the waste collection teams.

“Freeway's flexibility means we can run detailed reports across our entire inventory - it even helps with managing imprest stock. The process is slightly different but still very easy to do thanks to the software,” says Homes.