Tees Valley company signs Volkswagen FS as customer

Coeus Software, the developer of intelligent mobile solutions for frontline workers, has today launched CheckPlate. CheckPlate is a new mobile Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) vehicle stock audit solution for vehicle leasing and remarketing companies, auction houses, fleet managers, dealerships and any other company that regularly needs to check vehicles against a stock list.

CheckPlate combines an Android mobile app with a cloud-based service to create a vehicle stock audit solution which can reduce auditing and reporting time by up to 90%. To audit, simply upload a stock list and scan vehicle plates with the smartphone’s camera to check them off against stock.

CheckPlate supports multiple Android devices under one account, so getting up and running with an audit team is quick and easy. With the companion management portal web app, manage users and audits, upload stock lists, monitor audit progress in near real-time, and run reconciliation reports which can be downloaded as spreadsheet files.

With the number of vehicles going through the remarketing process having grown significantly over the last 10 years as the leasing market expanded, vehicle remarketing companies need a much faster way to accurately measure and reconcile their stock levels.

Manual record-keeping and older-generation digital solutions simply cannot cope with the higher volume of vehicles, resulting in audits that are very labour intensive and slow to complete. With vehicles entering and leaving sites every day often in sites shared by multiple companies and brands it can be difficult to arrive at a definitive snapshot of stock at any point-in-time.

CheckPlate’s first customer, Volkswagen Financial Services (VWFS), has seen its stock levels soar by over 500 per cent during the last decade, growing from an average of 5,000 vehicles at any one time to 25,000+ vehicles spread over several sites around the United Kingdom. It needed a solution that could cope with this significant rise in volume. Since deploying CheckPlate, VWFS has reduced audit times by 90 per cent when compared to its previous digital solution.

Other benefits include:

More accurate audits: Previously it would take so long to conduct an audit that approximately 10 per cent of the vehicles would not be accounted for because they had already been moved to another location. With audits now completed so fast, stock levels can be reconciled significantly faster and more accurately.

Efficiency: An audit that would usually take around 18 people up to two days to complete can now be accomplished with only six people in half a day. Speed of capture: Registration plates are now typically captured and processed within a second, without the need to press a button. The speed of the audit is now only limited by the walking speed of the agent carrying the device.

Near real-time data results in faster reconciliation: CheckPlate feeds live data from the Android devices directly to the cloud, resulting in near real-time reconciliation of stock levels via CheckPlate’s web portal. Whereas previously it could take a few days or weeks to reconcile stock levels, now VWFS is informed of new stock and can verify against latest stocklists while the audit is still taking place.

Enhanced user experience: No one wants to conduct audits in the middle of winter or during a rainstorm. With registration plates and VIN numbers read automatically with no button pressing required, operators are free to hold an umbrella in their other hand and can conduct audits while wearing gloves!

By Mark Adair – Correspondent, Bdaily