RAC provides car inspection services for a wide range of clients including prospective purchasers of used cars and car rental and leasing companies. For private individuals inspections highlight vehicle damage and can provide an accurate estimate of a vehicleís true value. For leasing and rental companies in the UK, the cost of repairing damaged vehicles is a considerable strain on their annual budgets.

Situation

When vehicles come to be returned at the end of their leasing/rental contracts, the production of a comprehensive and accurate inspection report is vital in such circumstances, so that any repair costs and the party responsible for them can be correctly and fairly identified. The more speedily this can be presented to the client, the better.

Previously, RAC inspection engineers used paper forms for initial data gathering, with data input to computerised systems taking place as a separate stage in the procedure. Head of Operations for RAC Inspection Services, Adrian McCarthy, outlines the shortcomings of this approach: "Because reports were handwritten, engineers' notes could be hard to read; sometimes smudged with car grease or damaged by rain. Reports might be delayed because engineers relied on posting the forms back to head office, which meant deadlines could be missed, and we had to budget turnaround in terms of days. RAC soon realised that the existing system was unwieldy and it needed to find a new way to gather information in the field.

"Using paper based systems our engineers could not get an accurate repair cost while in the field. Prices for parts and labour were only available in large, heavy printed books which quickly went out of date and which were simply not viable to supply. We needed a way to speed up the data collection process and enable access to costing information."

Solution and Benefits

The solution came from TBS, using its TaskMaster software as the base data capture tool. This was installed on Microsoft® Windows® Powered Compaq iPAQH3660s and issued to 75 RAC field engineers, allowing them to inspect vehicles, record vital information and gain access to costing information as part of a single process. The new system both improves efficiency and saves money, as McCarthy explains: "The iPAQ contains a database of repair costs, and a report complete with billing can be printed on-site. With back-end administration reduced by around eight per cent, total job time, including booking, inspection and administration has fallen from 45 to 35 minutes.

One-time data entry also reduces the chances of errors creeping in. We are more efficient and more productive, and the shift to a fully computerised system has improved the presentation of our reports so much that our customer satisfaction level has risen from 75% to 96%," he says.

"Because of our good relationship with TBS and also because the Microsoft platform was so flexible to work with, we could tailor the TaskMaster software to our needs. It only took about half a day to train each engineer. Of course, this is possible because so many people are familiar with Windows, but even for those who weren't, it was a straight-forward process," says McCarthy. "Development costs will take two years to recoup, which is well within our expectations. Further development should be even more cost effective, because of the extensibility of the Pocket PC 2002 platform."

Steve Reynolds, Managing Director of TBS, explains why a Microsoft solution was chosen. "Of all the options available, a Windows Powered solution was the obvious choice. The platform is easy for us to develop on, and its back office integration is superb. In the past we had developed for RAC using Casio's tablet-based devices running on an earlier version of Windows CE. This time we chose the iPAQ because of its superior display, faster processor and smaller form factor. Even when housed in our specially designed ruggedised cases, the devices are light and easy to carry, but are still powerful enough to hold all the data."

TaskMaster includes a repair costs database supplied by Glass's, the most reputable supplier of this kind of data. This allows repair costs to be calculated automatically using information from this database in conjunction with data captured by inspection engineers. The database is kept up to date via downloads received at the same time as inspection engineers upload inspection reports. Typically this is a once daily task lasting around 60 seconds, though engineers can make a connection as often as they require.

RAC Inspection Services is now looking towards the kind of future capabilities which could improve the system further. One possibility is to introduce wireless facilities for real-time data sharing. This will increase efficiency in inspections which involve several engineers viewing the same vehicle.