Finalist | ivips Fleet Management (Belgium) - manage car fleets better

Managing corporate car fleets is time consuming and costly. The belgian startup ivips is offering corporations a solution which aims to optimize the organisation of fleets, but also to motivate drivers for better driving behaviours through a special bonus systems. We asked the CODE_n finalist some questions about his business model.

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Where did your idea for the company come from?

Fleet managers lack information about their vehicles to efficiently manage them, the related costs and the driving behaviour of those using them. Other software only offers partial solutions for an isolated aspect of a business without fulfilling crucial requirements specific to a sector. The idea was to offer fully integrated solutions tailored to a business’s needs aimed at cost savings, automation and efficiency by incorporating real-time vehicle communication with the rest of the business’s information.

For which kind of audience is your product or service intended and what problem is it solving?

We offer businesses a modular web-based platform to manage their fleet in a user-friendly and cost-efficient manner. Together with our customers we compose optimised solutions to best match their needs resulting in substantial cost savings and profound automation of a client’s key processes. Our software allows for efficient management and detailed reporting, while data captured by our on-board hardware units is incorporated in advanced planning, track and trace, maintenance and accounting.
Our primary customers are fleet managers and business owners for whom managing the company vehicles is time-consuming and costly. ivips is currently active in the car rental and logistics industries. We will expand our activities to leasing companies and are building solutions for large corporate fleets, taxi and healthcare transport services. Our cloud-based solution with uniform hardware across sectors allows for quick adaptability and exporting to new markets.

Tell us a bit about the company’s founders like their professional or industry background and the origins of the founding idea.

ivips has been founded by 5 enthusiastic entrepreneurs, each with distinctive skills, expertise and interests. The founders have backgrounds in IT and management consulting firms, in tech companies and as phd students at universities. This results in a strong management team that combines technical know-how with business insights and that is geared for growth and expansion in the near future. The team is driven by passion, commitment and perseverance and perceives every challenge as an opportunity.

You’ve set various goals that you want to reach with your solution. One is called EcoBonus, which, if we understood correctly, tries to motivate the drivers to reduce their footprint on climate change. How exactly does this work? Which parameters do you analyse and how is this communicated to the users? Is gamification an important factor to make it work?

By precisely capturing and analysing vehicle data in real time we are able to create a comprehensive EcoDriving score. Based on this score and further contextual analysis feedback and driving tips are automatically generated and shared on a mobile application. Setting up and communicating on company-wide goals for cost savings and for improvements in eco-friendly driving behaviour allows us to incentivise employees and drivers with a tailored financial reward system: our EcoBonus program.
The cost-effectiveness of our solution allow us to offer a product that pays itself back from day one.
Direct benefits:

• Owners of (company) vehicles experience reduced costs for fuel and maintenance, higher resale values and a reduced number of accidents.
• Drivers benefit from financial rewards and a safer driving behaviour.

Indirect benefits:

• The environment suffers less from emissions.
• Society benefits from a reduction in traffic jams (by discouraging driving during rush hours).

Gamification is a possibility (if for example different business units compete for the best score / highest bonus) but we mainly achieve better driving behaviour through the financial incentivising of the drivers. This results in long term results by fostering good driving behaviour.

See ivips Fleet Management live on the CODE_n Stage on Tuesday, 17.03.2015.