Drive Service SPA - Customer Case Study

Drive Service is an Italian company that is a recognized leader in the Automotive Industry for the Fleet Management and Cost Optimization of large and small fleets of vehicles. It annual turnaround is more than 50 Mln. of Euros, with 120 FTEs and 2 main locations in Italy and a subsidiary in Spain. The company target market is made of privately owned companies, public company and a very important chunk of national Public Administration. The services provided go from fleet operative and administrative cost optimization till operative maintenance planning and execution with added services like vehicle substitution, vehicle towing and repair till car insurance advisory. Recently Drive Service has become part of a larger Group, Cobra Automotive Technologies, whose technological capabilities span from vehicle recognition and tracking to thief alarm and driver behavioral analysis. The IT is mainly a process lever but also an enabler and an important part the service delivery: from managing the planned maintenance processes till evaluating and managing the single ordinary and extraordinary maintenance, it usually allows the process to be carried out efficiently as well as to integrate information and tasks internally and externally as regarded to business processes; the most important challenge Drive Service is currently facing is to be capable to integrate its own processes and systems within the broader Supply Chains made of Supplier and Customers processes and ICT solutions. DS used a single project manager approach in planning and tracking projects; moreover, it was lacking a single coherent picture of what's going on in terms of activities as well as of managing external personnel. Another lack was the possibility to observe and allocate resources cross-project, especially true for external consultant and outsourcing developers. Right now having a single instrument that allows data to be visible and shared across multiple projects, supplier and Prj. Leader allows a better evaluation of time and schedule as well as budget vs. actual cost allocations while giving the main stakeholders a deeper understanding of ICT activities / projects and costs. External personnel can moreover have the possibility to commit tasks / efforts and advancements to items and projects as they are progressing toward the goals with the money / resources spent and results achieved. The time reporting and project advancement are very powerful, as well as the status reporting and cost reporting features. Being a web application, it is always on whatever site you are and ready for internal as well as external stakeholder; it is also possible to use the same platform to share news and reports with external customers without proliferating the means of communication while centrally managing the status reports what become integral part of the project management process and not an added effort from the parties involved. Being able to track cross-project advancements and expenses, having a coherent picture of status and projects issues, managing the whole project portfolio being able to share / move resources in a dynamic way evaluating the impact of the resource allocation and sharing it without multiple communications to be produced / managed. Moreover, the possibility to have on a single platform the internal personnel, the external resources and the Customers is a very powerful way to have a clear picture of the whole environment in a systemic way to be able to manage issue and ameliorate the performance of a given project and a deeper understanding of the causes of the mismatch between plans and effects.