Company Overview
Incorporated in 2004, GRITIT is the UK market leader in the field of Winter Risk
Management, providing gritting and snowclearance services 24/7 to a broad range
of businesses including local authorities, public and private health providers and to both large and small enterprises.
With access to the latest online weather forecasting services and operating out
of 92 strategically positioned regional depots, GRITIT ensures that safe access
at its customers' premises is maintained in advance and during adverse weather
conditions. In a typical winter, it is likely that the company will carry out an average of 100,000 service visits across the UK
mainland and Northern Ireland. GRITIT's mobile work force increases to some 350 operators with a fleet of 250 vehicles at the height of the winter season.
The Challenge
Working across five regions, the core business is driven by the provision of
preventative, proactive gritting and snow clearance services.
GRITIT's customers in the Utilities sector includes one of the UK's largest water companies which has requirements beyond the winter maintenance services of its own corporate premises.
Working on behalf of the water company, GRITIT has a dedicated operator team that provides a response and repair service for pipe damage and water leak repair. Servicing multiple sites, a primary
business requirement is for operators to work within a specific time window
between 6PM and 6AM. CoPilot® Live™ satellite navigation
software is helping GRITIT operators meet this critical business need.
Previously, drivers relied on a combination of paper mapping or in some cases, their own Personal Navigation Devices (PNDs) for direction between scheduled service visits. With some operators visiting up to 30 sites per shift - and more in the case of the water maintenance operators, it
became apparent that a coherent approach to satellite navigation would be beneficial to the business.
The Solution
Now, all operators are issued with a HTC smartphone incorporating line-of-business software linking to Nimbus, GRITIT's Cloud-based proprietary management
system, as well as CoPilot Live satellite navigation. As Jonathan Petsch, Operations Managerat GRITIT describes:
"We decided to standardise our approach to navigation provision by issuing all of our operators with the same application. CoPilot Live has proved particularly useful for our water maintenance team as the
location for repair can be at any point within a wide geographical area. In these cases, the route optimisation within CoPilot Live helps the operator
manage the order of their appointments." Equipped with a HTC smartphone,
GRITIT operators can now download their schedule, locate their service visits through CoPilot Live and use the device to record
their arrival and departure times. Principally for the benefit of GRITIT's
clients, vehicle-based automated tracking and location Geo-fencing also records
driver movements, providing a failsafe method of recording operator on-site
timings.
The Benefits
Originally based on proprietary software, Microsoft® Dynamics CRM, Nimbus has
been extensively developed as a unique platform on which GRITIT has integrated
all of its business critical applications. Through Nimbus, operators receive their job schedules direct onto their smartphone,
also equipped with CoPilot Live. Removing the need for issuing operators
with a separate PND but providing familiar to use visual and turn-by-turn
audio instructions, CoPilot Live is available as an on smartphone guide for operators new to a schedule, or conducting site visits
outside of their regular pattern.
The water company operators' routines are more dynamic in
that they do not have a schedule of regular, pre-assigned properties
to administer, making navigation more of an essential requirement.
Service Record and Customer Satisfaction
In GRITIT's latest customer satisfaction survey, 99.2% of customers reported
their satisfaction with the service they receive from GRITIT.
In its busiest year to date, of 110,000 service visits GRITIT successfully
completed 99.98% of which 99.99% were incident free.
Managing Director, Nikki Singh-Barmi comments "The performance,
integration and accuracy of our systems is of paramount importance to the
consistency of service that we provide to our customers. We remove margin
for error which in turn keeps our customers' sites safe and operational
-GRITIT strives to work with the best suppliers to produce the best results.
Working with CoPilot Live helps us to do that.
Managing Environmental Impact
In 2011, GRITIT was the UK's 37th* fastest growing company and with further expansion planned, GRIT IT remains committed to minimising the environmental impact of its field operatives. As evidence of this commitment, CoPilot Live routing optimisation is helping the company reduce both out of route mileage and its carbon footprint in line with current ISO guidelines.