
Arval UK has witnessed a series of major efficiencies in its new vehicle delivery and used vehicle collection operations since switching to the moDel solution from Ebbon-Dacs.
Owned by BNP Paribas, Swindon, England-based Arval operates a fleet of around 160,000 cars and vans in the UK, and is part of a wider global operation that adds up to more than 1,000,000 vehicles in 28 countries.
In the UK, Arval is a member of the community of leasing companies, vehicle manufacturers and dealers that employs Ebbon-Dacs’ market-leasing e-procurement platform Leaselink, which now sources more than 150,000 vehicles a year.
To maximize the benefits of being a Leaselink user, Arval also employs the complementary moDel solution with the majority of the 20,000 cars and vans it delivers each year.
moDel has been designed to allow Leaselink users to automatically upload all electronic vehicle delivery and collection information directly into the platform, thus cutting time, errors and needless administration and speeding up the time to market.
Claire Hughes, Vehicle Acquisitions Manager at Arval UK, said the use of moDel had speeded up Arval’s ability to start the new vehicle contracts for our corporate customers significantly and allowed much faster payment to its supplying dealers.
“Originally, we would have to wait 4-5 days to receive delivery paperwork back from our dealers. Now, it is uploaded instantly and the new vehicle appears on our system after 24 hours. That speeds up the process for our customers and allows us to pay our dealers more quickly, too.
“Since we began using moDel 18 months ago, some 90% of our new vehicles are now delivered through the system by our preferred dealer network and, in our latest tender, we have stipulated that this should be increased to 100%.
“This is something that many of our dealers welcome as it guarantees them faster payments and a better vehicle handover experience as the system walks the delivery driver through the process so that nothing can be missed out,” she said.
Hughes also said that the use of an inbuilt camera within moDel had provided greater transparency over the condition of vehicles being collected and delivered.
In the last 12 months, Ebbon-Dacs has seen the volume of vehicle transactions going through the moDel solution increase significantly, so that it now handles some 18,000 vehicle movements per month.
The company has recently enhanced the system’s capabilities, and it can now be used on all Android smart phones with screens of five inches or bigger. And by adding a schematic of a generic van to the system’s flat screen, users can now record and notify areas of damage on vans as well as cars.
Ebbon-Dacs’ Head of Commercial – moDel, Michael Terry, said: “We are delighted to hear of the efficiencies that Arval has achieved in its vehicle delivery operations thanks to moDel, which has become the benchmark system for fully automated vehicle collection and delivery within the fleet market.
“Along with the new mobile phone and vans capability, we are about to launch a number of new features within the system which we believe make it still more attractive and user-friendly,” he added.