Fleet World Workshop Tools
Car Tax Calculator
CO2 Calculator
Van Tax Calculator
BiK Rates Company Car Tax

Interview: Digital Innk’s Angela Montacute

Fleets struggle to ignore Software-as-a-Service offerings, as more and more products come onto the market. One of the new players is Digital Innk, whose CEO, Angela Montacute, explains how it is doing things differently.

Angela Montacute, CEO, Digital Innk

Opportunities to lead a start-up business don’t come around very often. So when Angela Montacute met up with a group of ex-colleagues who were setting up a business, she jumped at the chance.

Montacute is no stranger to fleet – in 2020, she called time on a 15-year stint at Arval, where she held a number of positions, ultimately rising to chief operating officer. In that time, she re-invented Arval UK’s technology suite before moving to Group level to cover between 25 and 30 countries as service delivery director. She also saw the integration of GE Capital Fleet Services, which Arval acquired in 2015.

The founders of what was to become Digital Innk knew that Montacute could make a big impression. “They asked me if I would lead the company because of my experience in driving the commercialisation of new ideas,” she explains.

The team didn’t waste time in getting things moving

“I formally joined in the summer of 2020 and got everyone organised and structured. I knew we had to get a real product out to people as soon as possible – we couldn’t depend on just slides and presentations. We invested in some offshore resources to bolster our technical activity – a fantastic team of people based in India – and start commercialising the product by March 2021.”

It’s certainly a memorable company name…

“The Digital Innk name was registered quite early on in the process in order to have something official. The idea was to focus on the digitalisation of what is still quite a paper-based and manual industry. But they didn’t want a single ‘n’ because that would imply it was a something to do with photocopier or printers. But while the company name is Digital Innk, we promote the product as ViSN.”

It’s a product that will hopefully help make lives easier for fleets

“It’s a modular-based suite of products, which are effectively three components all linked together. There’s an app, which is both Apple- and Android-compatible. That app is linked to two Software-as-a-Service cloud-based backends. One for a fleet owner-operator or anyone who needs a view of a collective set of vehicles. The other one is for the network provider.”

“We wanted to put the power in the drivers’ hands and make it simple for
them to feel empowered”

One of the biggest benefits is making life easier for drivers

“Some of the problem statements that I’d experienced, certainly in my life trying to make managing the fleet as efficient as possible, had been around the frustrations of drivers. For example, they would have to phone the leasing company to book a service, or a supplier to get the booking in. And then the supplier would have to phone the driver back to confirm, or the driver would simply turn up at a supplier who may not have been on the preferred network of the fleet customer.

“So we wanted to put the power in the drivers’ hands and make it simple for them to feel empowered about booking service maintenance, repair, tyres, glass, MOT, anything like that. Then we link that directly into a whole set of system logic – to get to the right network providers to be able to respond electronically to confirm the booking – and all the time the fleet owner-operator has real-time visibility.”

The Digital Innk team has tried to draw on experiences in normal consumer life

“When you take your vehicle into the garage, for example, you can use a simple ‘check-in’ button to confirm the vehicle is on-site. The first thing the garage will do is check in the vehicle on their system, which means the vehicle off-road time is very, very accurate. For a lot of fleets, this is really important that they can monitor over time the vehicle off-road.

“So we’ve tried to think of what are all the challenges we used to face and how we can make it simple for the natural flow of the process to overcome those challenges.”

To get people’s buy-in to the app, there’s a lot more user-involvement, but in a simplified way

“If a vehicle is on contract hire, it’s probably between one and three years old. That’s not enough SMR interactions for somebody to use an app, but I was really keen that we added an in-app notifications capability. When fleet financiers send paper letters to customers once a quarter asking for the mileage, not only is there a big environmental impact, but the response rate is very low. With the app, we can allow that fleet operator to set a very simple parameter – how frequently do you want to send an in-app message to the driver to load their mileage, for example.

“As soon as the driver records the mileage, it’s visible to the other party; it’s all done in real time.”

The company has secured some serious funding, so many more products  are coming down the track

“We’ll soon have the ability to schedule and record a vehicle health check on the app. So if they are shared vehicles, or drivers have been allocated to a vehicle, they can do a walk around, and check all the standard safety and compliance checks. If anything is flagged up, it’s visible to the fleet manager.

“Following that, there will be a ‘fit to drive’ declaration. So from a compliance point of view, again, it’s all recorded. Everything’s dated and timestamped, all the replies to the health tracks that fit-to-drive, or date and timestamped. We’ve used the very latest API link for the DVLA to undertake licence checking.

“Then the next big topic that we’re working on is EV – charging points, payments and collections – because that’s a real pain point for fleets.”

In terms of targets, the startup is off to a flyer

“So far, we’ve got 2,000 suppliers and two early adopters. In terms of suppliers, the goal by the end of 2022 is to have 4,500. We also plan to have more than 30 individual customers signed up by that time, too.

“We would like to have 20,000 drivers engaged and signed up to our compliance modules. Those will be within probably the other sales customer channels, but that’s the goal.”

For more of the latest industry news, click here.

John Challen

John previously edited International Fleet World magazine, and brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the role, having been in automotive journalism for more than 20 years. Over those two decades, he has researched and written about a vast range of automotive topics, including fleet, EVs, engineering, design, retail and the aftermarket.