The rise of online selling and changes in demand for vehicles are leading to a growing need for sophisticated vehicle movement solutions.
Engineius, a tech-enabled vehicle movement service in the UK, said that not only was the number of vehicle movements required by the sector growing, but also the range of movements required.
This is due to a variety of trends; not just online selling and the ‘sell us your car’ private buying channel, but also the shift from ownership to usership, and the disruption of the remarketing sector.
“The world has changed,” said Calum Slowther, managing director at Engineius. “Dealers, OEMs, online retailers, leasing companies and new models such as ‘sell us your car models’ have proliferated and so too has the need for vehicle movement to support new ways of working.”
The key change in recent years has not been the nature of movements needed, but the volume and range of movements that any one company needs to organise as part of their daily operation, he explained.
“The logistics burden placed on a traditional dealer, for example, has significantly increased in complexity.
“To put it simply, 10 years ago, some dealers may well have not had to organise any vehicle movements. Vehicles arrived on bulk transporters from ports or auctions, and 100% of sales were done physically.
“To stay competitive, dealers now need to be able to offer home delivery, purchase vehicles one-by-one from the private individuals, and likely support a proliferation of ownership models being pushed by OEM and leasing partners,” Slowther outlined.
And this trend is likely to only increase as the online shift continues and the agency model rolls out.
“One customer no longer equals one type of movement – rental isn’t just defleeting, and dealerships aren’t just inter-branch transfers,” commented Slowther. “As such, we have spent a lot of time thinking about how we can help bring simplicity to an increasingly complex picture for all of our customers.”
Next month, Engineius introduces a functionality to all clients that allows them to build multiple ‘customisable workflows’. This gives customers form-building capabilities, allowing its delivery drivers to follow complex sets of instructions with ease.
The customer specifies not only the instructions to be followed, but the type of data they want collected, including photos and setting multiple select options. It marks a shift from traditional one-size-fits-all PoDs to truly customisable, digital workflows – the data from which can be integrated straight into customer systems.
The functionality comes with several further advantages, as Slowther highlighted.
“It allows us to better identify, protect and remove personal information, as well as vary pricing to reflect the complexity of different movement types.”
“This is a really important step forward for Engineius in becoming the one-stop-shop vehicle logistics solution for companies across the automotive industry, however large or complex.”
