Jaama walked away with the award for the Best Risk Management system in this year’s BusinessCar fleet technology awards, and the strength of the system is clear due to it being employed by a number of companies in the fleet sector as an additional offering to their customers.
Days Contract Hire, Fleet Hire, JCT600 Contracts, Ogilvie Fleet and Prohire have all applied the Key2 risk profile system since launch this year.
Due to the changing nature of what a fleet deems to be of high risk, the system had to be customisable and that’s been a key part of its success according to managing director, Martin Evans.
He says: “There are a lot of factors that come into play when fleets are putting together their risk profile.
“We were finding out that a lot of our customers would have different criteria for their risk management profiles, so we wanted to offer a solution where each customer could customise and choose each element to suit.”
The Key2 risk profile module includes a direct feed from the DVLA’s licence-checking service, and fleet managers can choose risk factors weighted by driver age, endorsements, accident frequency, business miles per annum, and other factors such as how long a driver has held their licence.
The criteria each company selects can then be accumulated to produce a total individual driver risk score set against a company’s own risk criteria.
A driver’s risk can easily be identified by a traffic light system, with ‘red’ drivers posing the highest risk. Fleets can monitor the frequency of driver licence checking depending on the risk score of each driver. If drivers move from amber to red or from green to amber (as well as when drivers slip down the risk score ladder) the system can send an automatic notification to prompt managers. It also means fleets have a clear and detailed audit trail.
Rather than being the second version of the software, Key2 is a play on words according to Evans – it’s the ‘key to’ a fleet’s software problems.
He said: “Rather than businesses buying the system as a one-off, which can be quite a big expense, we’re constantly upgrading and updating Key2.” As a result, Jaama doesn’t tend to lose customers because there’s never the problem of having to buy a new system due to its team of developers working on upgrading the current system so it doesn’t become obsolete.
Jaama has a wide customer base using the system, including public sector fleets, HGV operators, as well as leasing companies in the BusinessCar BC50.
Evans said the next step for Key2 is to continue evaluating what customers want and adding new features: “The risk profile is constantly evolving and can be determined by a company’s own perception of themselves, [and] movements in the industry or legislation. There are a number of different factors that we’ll keep monitoring and we’ll add new features as things change.”
One of these areas is the potential to view driving licence information in real time, and while it is yet to be confirmed if it will be possible for companies to view changes to a driver’s circumstances with endorsements as soon as they happen, it’s an area Jaama is lobbying for.
Data security
Jaama has recently joined the Association for Driving Licence Verification (ADLV) in the lead-up to the abolition of the current paper counterpart at the start of 2015.
The body is made up of providers of driver licence checking and aims to make sure companies submitting batch checks for driving licences online are audited to meet the DVLA’s data assurance standards.
Jaama MD Martin Evans says: “We do have some customers who are quite edgy about sharing information. We have to act as a conduit for those companies and they can be sure in the knowledge that we’re doing things correctly and securely.
“It’s a case of reassuring them and making sure the data is encrypted.”
Jaama’s electronic driver entitlement checking service (EDECS) is used by a wide range of fleets and contract hire and leasing companies to check the validity of employees’ driving licences. The service is available as a stand-alone product or can be integrated within Jaama’s Key2 software to look at a driver’s safety record and points history. Employees have to give their permission for checks to be carried out against the DVLA’s database for companies to be able to use the system and access information.
The ADLV will conduct regular audits of members to make sure they operate within a strict code of conduct to ensure that the DVLA’s data assurance standards are met.
Evans says: “Joining the ADLV changes nothing for our customers except that we will work in partnership with the organisation and the DVLA in the development of the next generation of the EDECS licence-checking service.
