A Driver Profiler module, within the company’s mainstream FleetAcumen fleet management system, records all costs incurred by every company driver entered on the system.

These include fuel expenditure, maintenance costs, repair bills, end-of-contract charges, speeding fines and accident costs for each driver. These costs are allocated points within a grading system for each driver, which allows a cost profile to be built up for each one.

From this, those drivers which incur average costs and those which are the least and most expensive within the company can be easily identified.

Fleet managers can then decide if remedial action for the most costly drivers, such as speed awareness or other training courses, is required to try and correct driver behaviours.

‘This is not Big Brother functionality but a realistic attempt to identify those drivers who are the biggest drain on company’s resources at a time when many companies are looking to exert tight cost controls to maintain profitability,’ said Jon Tandy, business development manager at Mycompanyfleet.

‘With the economy still struggling to recover from recession in many areas, tight cost control remains right at the top of the corporate agenda and many companies are looking for as many ways of keeping costs in check as possible.

‘We know from talking to fleet operators that they would welcome this type of functionality as it would allow them to quantify the cost they are incurring on an individual driver basis and give them greater control over their fleet budgets,’ he said.

The Driver Profiler functionality is part of a suite of services that Mycompanyfleet is able to offer in relation to individual drivers. These include licence checking, mileage management and grey fleet management services through the Driver SelfServe software solution.

Licence checking of all company employees who drive on business, in either a company provided vehicle or their own, should be a fundamental part of every organisation’s road risk management policy.

However, changes to the driver licence system planned for two years’ time have increased the need to check licences online to ensure drivers are still qualified to drive and do not have excess penalty points on their licences

The Department for Transport announced earlier this year that, as part of its "red tape challenge" to cut bureaucracy, it is removing the regulation requiring drivers with the credit card-sized photo driving licence to hold a paper counterpart highlighting driving category exemptions and penalty points.

It would now appear that the only way of checking driving licence details accurately, including fines and penalty points, would be directly with the DVLA or via a third party checking agency.

Jon Tandy said that while it was a far from perfect method because the details it contained was often out of date, the paper counterpart was still used by many fleets as a means of proving whether drivers had points or fines on their licence.

'In the future, fleets will have to find some form of alternative checking to fulfil their duty of care, and we firmly believe that using some form of online system is the only alternative,' he said.

Mycompanyfleet provides driver licence checking for a multitude of organizations in both private and public sectors in the UK.

‘While we can supply fleet customers with accurate and auditable online licence checking, we can also add deeper background checks as part of an enhanced driver checking service should they so require. All the results feed directly into our Fleet Acumen fleet management system to provide an up to date and accurate record of all company drivers,’ he said.

‘Whatever is decided going forward, we will ensure our software continues to provide the capability to carry out the necessary checks on an automated basis in order to satisfy fleet requirements,’ he added.