Held earlier this week (12 May) at the iconic Silverstone Circuit, the event was attended by fleet decision-makers from across the UK, who made the most of the opportunity to drive the latest fleets cars on offer and view a range of new innovations showcased at the event.

At the event, Driving Monitor gave live demonstrations of its new paperless licence checking service using a bespoke eConsent system called 'ePass' (electronic Permit and Safety System). 

The company showcased how the new paperless DVLA licence checking service will radically reduce the admin time involved in licence checking.

Kevin Curtis, managing director of Driving Monitor, commented: “The live demos show first hand how simple and fast our new licence checking service runs. With the forthcoming counterpart abolition in June this year we feel that fleet managers need a simple and fast way of checking their employees’ licences. The new eConsent system we have developed is a UK first and takes the administration away from collecting consent from drivers via the traditional paper route.

“Our new eConsent system is called ePass (Electronic Permit and Safety System) and connects the driver consent with the new live real-time checking service we have recently launched. This means for the first time a manager can verify the status of their employees’ licences within seconds. Traditionally we’ve had to rely on the DVLA ‘batch’-processing processing model where we send a volume of licence checking data via a secure channel to the DVLA – and then wait for the ‘batch’ of results to be returned.

“The new platform has opened up a whole range of new services we can offer with instant real-time checks. We can also get instant results when a driver completes our Driving Monitor risk assessment profiler, meaning the DVLA data is right up-to-date allowing the risk assessment to be 100% accurate instantly. We have also recently tested the new real-time service against the current overnight batch service that we use via a secure DVLA link. Our results found that 100% of records that were previously suppressed via the overnight EDECs service were checked successfully via the new real-time service. This is a marked improvement on reducing the number of records that previously were held up by the DVLA if they were working on a licence. We can now use the new real-time service to reduce the number of blocked records.”

Kevin Curtis went on to say: “One of the main areas of confusion we’ve found talking to customers is that the DVLA are releasing a similar service this summer. However there needs to be a distinction from the service that the DVLA are going to provide (to replace the counterpart once it’s been removed) and the services that companies such as Driving Monitor offer fleet and health & safety managers. The new DVLA ‘Share My Licence’ service that will be launched in the summer will only offer a single view approach and relies on the driver registering for the service using the government gateway ID verification platform.

“What will become apparent very quickly is that employers will not want their drivers taking up valuable time going through an online approval process to register, then to generate a one-time use code that needs to be handed to the employer. Fleet managers also need to understand that the new DVLA service is not designed to give any ‘management’ reporting or any view across more that one employee.

“Driving Monitor offer a completely managed service, from collection of consent to full web dashboard and automated reports on licence status, points, categories and entitlements. As we’ve been operating driver risk management solutions since 2002 we’ve been continuously developing our technology platforms to ensure our customers benefit from these new innovations.

“We find that when a company has more than a handful of drivers the need for an auditable report to cover their Duty of Care comes into play. Fleet managers are far more savvy these days and understand the importance of combining their licence checks with other safety checks such as risk assessments and telematics data. They are demanding integrated services to take the burden away from their admin teams and this is where companies such as Driving Monitor add real value.”

If you didn’t get chance to see the demonstration at the show this week you can visit the Driving Monitor website for a free demo at http://www.drivingmonitor.com/free-demo-licence-monitor/

For details of the 2016 Silverstone Fleet Show, phone 01727 739160.