Tell us about Interactive Driving Systems and Virtual Risk Management
We “travel” with our clients on a journey to help create and promote a crash free culture within their organization and operating ‘DNA’. We overlay an infrastructure that is designed to facilitate managers leading both the culture change as well as their driver colleagues to safety. Our Management Information System is designed to put the most pertinent information in front of managers 24/7 so at the click of a mouse they can see in one system – training, incident, collision, license check and telematics data, etc. – all working together to help both identify and support their most “at-risk” drivers.
What is your approach?
Our approach, as one of our clients puts it, is not “rocket science!”
Management driven “continuous improvement” is the key to our clients’ success. Virtual Risk Management (VRM ) is designed to maximize the time available for management to intervene directly with their driver colleagues on an ongoing basis supported by training and best practice communication strategy. Our mission is very clear – overcome the complacency associated with getting drivers home to their family at the end of each work day and help the drivers stay focused on the driving task when driving for work purposes. All of our clients’ drivers can drive defensively when expected and are encouraged to do so – that is the challenge – but build that expectation into your operating DNA as you would your approach to sales, marketing, budgeting, or product development.
How do you gather information about a client’s safety culture before you implement a program?
Data, data, data! First we explore with the client their current policies and expectations of their drivers. However, this is never the whole picture! Many of our clients have fantastic policies and standards in place, but are they being reinforced and understood across the organization? Learning about the existing culture in an organization is not straightforward, especially when it comes to driver safety. Next we examine what data universes they collect and how they are analyzed. What we often find is most of the data is being collected, but they exist in different systems managed by different people who don’t often get the chance to bring it all together.
So one of the first major tasks is to work out how to bring all this data under one roof in VRM to help the implementation team, often for the first time, get a real understanding of what is going on across their business. This process then leads directly into setting up key metrics like collision/incident/injury per million miles driven to enable benchmarking internally across the business as well as externally with other organizations.
Finally, as part of this initial discovery process we bring together representatives from leadership, fleet, EHS, and risk to brainstorm where the client is now and where we are going.
What are some of the tools you use?
DriverINDEX – VRMs proprietary risk profiling too – l sits at the center of the Management Information System. It works 24/7 gathering and analyzing all the data being fed into it on the drivers, dynamically thinking about whether a driver’s performance is improving, declining or static. Alongside DriverINDEX sits a “human factor analysis tool” to help managers both consult with their drivers on their road safety performance as well as plan individual or group risk reduction activity. We are always conscious of how precious the Manager and Driver’s time is, so a big part of our job is to ensure the time available for road safety is as effective as possible.
Do you actually train the driver?
Interesting question; let’s break this down into two questions.
Does VRM flow best practice information to drivers and their managers on an ongoing basis to influence their attitude and behavior behind the wheel? YES – typically 3 or 4 times a year for all drivers and more often for High Risk drivers. This is achieved from a large library of what we call – RiskCOACH’s.
Does VRM provide skills and techniques training to drivers who would benefit from revisiting their core driving skills – NO – not part of our mission briefing.
Managers and Drivers interact with our solution over the internet linking to our highly secure servers based in the UK. Our strength is addressing the fundamental cause of road safety collisions – attitude and behavior.
We do, however, partner with the best driver training companies in the world to provide in-vehicle training when it is required and/or desirable. Organizations like the Institute of Advanced Motorists, RoSPA, RAC, PHH CTS, Smith Systems and Peak Performance are experts in their field – helping drivers develop their defensive driving skills and techniques behind the wheel. Reporting on the outcomes of the training can then be fed back into Virtual Risk Manager.
Can you give us a little sense about your global reach?
The Virtual Risk Manager solution is today active in over 60 countries and 35 languages and growing every day. Interactive Driving Systems (IDS) operates directly from offices currently in the USA, UK, Mexico, and Poland. VRM Partners and Agents operate in over 35 countries ensuring that both our global and in-country clients are never far from the “all in” support we pride ourselves on providing our clients. VRM also provides a 24/7 multilingual call center in San Francisco to ensure drivers are never far from a human voice to either solve their issue or get a message to our offices to respond to directly during working hours.
Can you share a success story?
One of our most successful clients is the Nestle′ Group headquartered in Switzerland. We are proud to have been supporting their safety objectives in partnership with their insurer, Zurich, for the last six years. We have programs with Nestle′ from Australia to Mexico and everywhere in between! Nestle′ Mexico started with VRM in December 2010 led by the local management team in Mexico City. Incredible team of Managers – totally committed to the welfare of their drivers, both employed and contracted. By December 2011, one short year later, Nestle ′ Mexico had seen a reduction in their collisions and incidents of 48% with not one fatality, compared to three the previous year. All the credit goes to the Nestle Management Team in Mexico – they led from the front on day one and have not looked back since. Congratulations Nestle′ Mexico!
What sort of trends are you seeing in this business?
We are finally starting to see a general understanding across the world that a “react to the crash” approach has limited success both in terms of driver safety, total cost of ownership reduction, and brand protection. Our most successful clients realize that the ultimate goal of creating a “crash free culture” requires a long term commitment driven by leadership and operations/sales management, facilitated by Risk, Insurance, Fleet, and EHS working as a team with IDS to support them, ensuring the key data is in the right hands at the right time. Being “proactive” is the new buzz word in our industry – risk assessment and performance analytics are the key to intervening before the crashes and preventing them in the first place.
Proactive leadership is the trend today, and tomorrow a whole new world is opening up before us – behavior based telematics. Imagine deploying a driver instructor to sit alongside your most “at-risk’”salespeople or delivery drivers 24/7 to guide and encourage excellence behind the wheel? This opportunity has arrived and we have clients piloting the VRM COACH solution now in partnership with GEOTAB and Assured Telematics. A two-pronged approach sees the driver getting direct feedback (audio alert) behind the wheel on their hard braking, acceleration, steering, idling, over speeding, etc., while at the same time DriverINDEX sees additional data being added on “aggressive driving per mile driven” to be integrated with a driver’s collision and license check performance data. Incredible opportunity to support your drivers proactively and leave the “react to the crash” approach in your rear view mirror! If your objectives are to see your drivers return home to their loved ones and communities every day of the working week, this is definitely an approach to consider.
We have also been instrumental in helping Zurich set up their own program globally for their clients – Zurich Fleet Intelligence. Some of the world’s leading telematics groups: Trimble, Green Road, People Net, DriveCam, Smart Drive, and Novacom Europe (currently) are all integrated with Virtual Risk Manager in order to provide these incredible opportunities to Zurich’s clients around the world. As we say at VRM – the opportunity to create a crash free culture has changed forever!
What are the best fleets doing?
Everything! To be honest with you, there is one word to describe the difference between the “best” and the “rest’”– LEADERSHIP!
The biggest single issue facing all of us in the world today wanting to make sure our employees get home safely every night at the end of the work day, is complacency or acceptance of the driving risk.
Society has come to accept that with vehicles comes death – over 1,000,000 people will die in vehicle collisions this year and every year, unless we all learn/commit/pledge to overcome this collective attitude. The only time we see this general attitude challenged is when it becomes personal – a son or daughter, mother or father, brother or sister, close colleague. Whether you are the parent of a teenage driver or the manager of a sales team, leadership is the magic ingredient to creating a crash free culture at work or at home. In our experience, the most successful leaders and parents adopt the pro-active approach, however unpopular or cautious that may seem at the time. You must be strong, the habits and behaviors we all need to manage will not change overnight. To all the leaders of the world committed to the safety of your teams and families – we salute your conviction, commitment and incredible effort!
BIO
Paul Sudell, Global Operations Manager, Interactive Driving Systems
Paul has been with Interactive Driving systems for over 2 years helping clients from all over the world ‘Create a Crash Free Culture’. Paul received his Bachelor’s degree in Finance and Marketing from Florida Atlantic University (FAU), and also achieved MBA in International Business from FAU.